


Part 1: Time

by VMorticia



Series: Cause and Effect [2]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Defenders (Marvel TV), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) - Alternate 2012 Timeline, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, F/M, Fantastic Racism, Female Loki (Marvel), Game of Thrones Spoilers, Gen, Genderfluid Loki (Marvel), Harry Potter spoilers, Loki (Marvel) Does What He Wants, Loki (Marvel) Has Issues, Loki is an unreliable narrator, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Past Brainwashing, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, Tony Stark's Incessant Pop-Culture References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-01-14 23:57:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 45,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21244136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VMorticia/pseuds/VMorticia
Summary: It's the day after the Battle of New York. Loki has escaped with the Tesseract, and someone who looked a lot like Captain America just borrowed the Sceptre without permission... and that's not going to be the strangest thing that's happened this week. Knowing the future is both a blessing and a curse.





	1. A Girl Is No One

**Author's Note:**

> This is to be a six part series... plus a prologue, several interludes, an epilogue, and possibly some other random asides depending on my mood.
> 
> The _Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D._ and _Defenders_ tags apply to later instalments, but are noted here because I didn't want to take anyone by surprise with a side of the MCU they hadn't watched / didn't want to read, once they were already invested in the story.
> 
> The spoiler tags for _Game of Thrones_ and _Harry Potter_ are because certain characters will discuss their plot. This is not a crossover.
> 
> Disclaimer: I own as much as Jon Snow knows. Characters' opinions are not necessarily a reflection of the author's.
> 
> Many thanks to my assistant writer, editor, and nightmare fuel shoveller, [Nimbus Llewelyn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NimbusLlewelyn/pseuds/NimbusLlewelyn).

\---

It was the morning after the Battle of New York, or as some civilians had already begun to refer to it colloquially: The Incident.

Steve Rogers was scowling across the conference table at Tony Stark. Stark has just told him that, much to everyone's frustration, all the security footage for the Tower had been lost. Someone had deleted it  _ after the fact _ . Someone didn't want them to learn the identity of the Captain America impersonator who had stolen - and then most bizarrely, returned - Loki's Sceptre.

Steve had found it lying innocuously on the ground next to him, when he awoke from the intruder's attack. The STRIKE team had taken it off their hands later that day, after asking Steve if he was done with it. He was still a bit puzzled about that.

"So we have nothing?" he asked Stark, just for clarification.

"Nada," Stark said, with a vaguely irritable shrug.

A knock on the door interrupted Steve before he could respond, and both men turned to see a woman step in briskly. She closed the door behind her, scanned the room carefully to see they were alone, then approached the table.

She was not a familiar face. Average height and features, subtle makeup, black hair tied back in a high ponytail and the usual SHIELD name-tags on her black formal business suit . Unlike the women from Steve's time, she wore trousers instead of a skirt.  Combined with her unusually pale skin, it gave her an almost monochrome look . The only splash of colour was the green and grey necktie she wore.

"Good morning, Mr Stark. Captain Rogers," she said politely. "I've been assigned to assist you with any follow-up to the Chitauri case."

"Is that a  _ Slytherin _ tie?" Stark asked, sounding amused at this observation.

"Contrary to popular opinion, SHIELD agents are permitted a sense of humour," she pointed out bluntly. "It could have been worse; I could have worn glasses."

Stark chuckled. "You're already better than Daniel Radcliffe."

"Am I, now?" she asked, a faint smile appearing briefly on her face.

"Yeah, Gracie."

She frowned slightly at this non-sequitur, finally missing a step in what Steve could only assume was a chain of random modern cultural references, all of which had completely gone over his head.

Stark rolled his eyes dramatically. " _ Big Trouble in Little China _ ," he deigned to explain. "It's a classic."

Steve had figured out pretty quickly that these 'explanations' basically translated to 'go watch a movie', mostly because the first two times he had done this, those exact words had been included. He had known the man for three days, and already they had done this verbal dance six times.

"And you are?" Stark asked languidly, eyeing her up almost automatically, as he would with any new woman he met. It was a habit of his that reminded Steve rather sharply of Howard.

"You can call me Regina Snow," she said curtly, tapping her name-tag, which did indeed show that name, before turning her attention to Steve. "I'm to be your personal assistant, Captain. Though if Mr Stark is interested in a closer working relationship, there's a chance that I  _ might  _ possibly consider trusting him with the odd bit of valuable information."

"She sounds like Romanoff on a 'playful' day," Stark muttered under his breath, before saying more clearly, "No thanks, lady."

She smiled, perhaps too innocently for Steve’s comfort. There was something off about her, something he couldn’t quite pin down: she had the same sort of secretiveness that he'd seen from many SHIELD operatives, but it was more than that. "That wasn't flirting, Mr Stark."

"Oh really?" Stark retorted, apparently surprised.

"You'd not need to guess at hints and vagaries if I were," she said, with a faint smile.

Steve chuckled at Stark's slightly confused frown; the billionaire clearly wasn't used to being turned down. But then Regina turned her eyes on him once more. "We have a few important matters to discuss in private, if you have the time, Captain?"

"Sure," he said, far more wary than enthusiastic. He wasn’t feeling especially fond of SHIELD at the moment, with a few honourable exceptions. But if they had work for him, how could he refuse? They were paying his rent.

"Have fun, you two," Stark sniped.

"Oh, we won't," Regina retorted sharply, causing Steve to hesitate for a moment, glancing at Stark in confusion. Going by Stark’s expression, he might as well have looked in the mirror. Apparently he wasn't the only one baffled by Regina Snow's behaviour.

\---

"You may want to look at this," Regina said, handing a tablet to Steve the moment they were alone, in one of Stark's 'private' (read: no cameras) office suites. Her choice of location felt quite deliberate.

He pressed the play button, and was shocked to see the recordings from Stark Tower yesterday. His doppelganger arrived just before Loki was defeated, and the split-screen, which showed both his doppelganger and Loki doing different things in different places at the same time, seemed to prove that whoever this really was, it most certainly wasn't Loki.

Steve watched in amazement as the doppelganger briskly ascended the stairs, and then waited, before pressing the elevator button at  _ just _ the right time to join the STRIKE team in their descent, with the Sceptre in their custody. There, he spoke to the team, saying that the Secretary wanted him to take over on the Sceptre. Initially, they refused.

Contrary to the beliefs of many, Steve was neither naive nor stupid. He could read the room in that elevator, and what he saw made his blood run cold. Everyone within, except his doppelganger, was reaching for their weapons, as if ready to attack what, to all outward appearances, seemed to be him. But instead the impostor defused the situation by leaning over and whispering two words in the agent’s ear.

Two words, just two, but they were more than enough to turn his world upside down.

Steve sat down heavily on the nearest flat surface - which was thankfully a nearby office chair and not a desk or the floor - numb with shock.

Hail HYDRA.

His double had said "Hail HYDRA" to the STRIKE team, and they had taken that as a  _ good _ thing.

He looked up at Regina, to see that she was simply watching his reaction, completely impassive. There was perhaps a hint of amusement in the corner of her eye, but nothing more sinister than that.

That, in itself, stirred an irrational flare of anger in Steve, in a way that some sign of malice wouldn't. Malice would indicate at least awareness of the significance of this. But this apparent apathy... didn't she  _ understand  _ what these two words signified, to him in particular? What they  _ proved?  _ Or did she know, and just didn’t care?

Then he looked back to the screen again. It was still split between Loki - now in the lobby with Stark, Thor, and a team of SHIELD agents gathered around - and the intruder, showing him confronting Steve. He remembered this fight. The intruder had sworn upon seeing him, but then tried to talk him down from a fight, before defending himself.

He watched the fight play out, wincing at the memory of the recent injuries from it. As he did, he also noticed the way the intruder had fought, in a way that he hadn’t at the time. Namely, it wasn’t like Loki at all, even taking into account the change in style to accommodate the shield. In fact, it was disturbingly familiar, as if the intruder was copying more than just his appearance. That said, he thought, if the intruder had tried to copy his fighting style, he’d done a poor job of it. While some parts were hauntingly familiar, others, bizarrely, were more like Natasha than him.

And for the second time, confirming that he hadn’t imagined it, he heard the second set of words to leave him in numb shock: "Bucky is alive."

He didn’t have time to dwell on it, however, and winced as he watched the replay of the distraction working, and his double using the Sceptre to stun him.

There was a brief pause as the double collected himself and the Sceptre, which was rather shockingly broken by the unexpected remark - was it a compliment? "That  _ is  _ America's Ass."

To Steve’s astonished embarrassment, he realised that his double was  _ admiring his backside! _

The recording tracked him leaving the building, almost five whole minutes after Loki had escaped with the Tesseract. But then it snapped back to show where Steve had been lying unconscious.

The double  _ appeared out of thin air _ next to him, set down the staff on the floor beside him, and disappeared again.

The recording ended there, and Steve slowly looked up at Regina. Once more, she was resolutely poker-faced. Taking a few moments to compose himself, he asked his next question in a carefully level voice. "Why did you erase this from the mainframe?"

"Didn't want the wrong people to see it," she said, shrugging almost nonchalantly, taking the tablet back from his unresisting hand.

"And why did you show me?"

"Well, you  _ are  _ America's hero. Thwarter of evil schemes, historically from without... perhaps it's time to start looking within."

Steve shook his head. "HYDRA," he said softly to himself, not wanting to believe it.

"Well, cut off one head..." she said, trailing off expectantly.

"Two more take its place," he replied sullenly.

"So, why not tell the wrong people that we started with two in the forties?" she asked him, a sly smile on her lips.

Steve paused, following the trail of given evidence to its logical endpoint. "You weren't hiding this from SHIELD," he said slowly, turning to face her. "You were hiding it from HYDRA?"

"What better way than to use their own tactics against them? They implant themselves as moles within SHIELD. We should do the same to them."

Steve slowly shook his head. "Whoever that man was, I'm not him. I can't lie like that."

A smile spread across Regina’s face; sly, dangerous, and deeply amused, as if she was in on a joke that he couldn’t even begin to comprehend. It was unnerving, even before he got to the profoundly strange sense that it was somehow familiar. "Oh, but you can,” she said. “And I'm going to help you."

He was still reeling from the whole thing, but suddenly, he began to realise that he had no idea who this woman was. Furthermore, if she was capable of the kind of duplicity required to triple-cross SHIELD in order to root out HYDRA, how did he know she was being honest now?

Slowly, he stood up, folding his arms and levelling a hard stare at her. "And who, exactly, are you?"

"The enemy of your enemy," she said, and this time she sounded unexpectedly serious. Perhaps honest, too, though if she really was that good, then there was a strong chance that he couldn't tell, even with the clear eye-contact they had now.

"Not an answer," he said firmly.

"You wouldn't believe the truth," she said, with a shrug that showed that the nonchalance of before, affected or otherwise, was back.

"Let me guess, though. Your real name's not ‘Regina Snow’?"

"Not really, no," she said, apparently unfazed by being confronted with her deception. "I blame television and popular culture, personally. Snow suited me for  _ Game of Thrones _ . Regina came from... something else."

Steve raised an eyebrow. "My first thought was Hans Christian Andersen."

She smiled slightly. It was only on one side of her mouth, but unlike the rest of her smiles, it  _ did  _ reach both her eyes. " _ The Snow Queen _ . Yes, that's another way to look at it."

"Why lie about your name?" he asked, frowning.

She snorted, apparently amused at his naivety. "Captain, do you really think that I’m the only person you’ve met in the last couple of days who’s using a name they weren’t born with?" she asked. "Mr Stark could tell you that when he first met the woman who calls herself Natasha Romanoff, she was pretending to be someone else entirely. Name and all." She shrugged. "Besides, what’s in a name? In this business, the name we choose is no more significant than the clothes - in some cases, a good deal less." He noticed, as she said that, her hand moved idly to the tie she wore, and he recalled the remark Stark had made. He didn't get the reference, but it couldn't be that hard to figure out, surely.

Steve’s eyes narrowed. It was this kind of reasoning that had made him increasingly less fond of SHIELD. He wasn’t naive: he was familiar with aliases, from his time dealing with the French Resistance, and he understood their occasional necessity. But that didn’t mean that he liked them. "If we're going to work together, I need to trust you," he said.

She shook her head. "If you knew my name... you wouldn't trust me."

Steve frowned at that enigmatic response. To say that it didn’t help was putting it mildly. "We're going to talk to Stark about this."

She regarded him for a long moment, before smiling that dangerous, unnervingly familiar smile. "As you wish."

\---

They had been gone less than half an hour - and in that time Tony had only managed to drive five SHIELD bureaucrats into whimpering submission over the phone, while trying to figure out who did what to his servers to lose that important surveillance footage - when Rogers and Snow returned.

"Hold on one moment," he said, putting the minion he'd been talking to on hold.

Long ago, he had chosen the most frustrating piece of classical music he could think of for his hold music. Being classical, nobody could justifiably complain, but at the same time, anyone who chose to try to stay on hold would be forced to listen to _In the Hall of the Mountain King_: a piece chosen specifically for its ability to turn the brain of the listener to melted string-cheese with prolonged exposure, on a constant loop for as long as either they could tolerate it, or Tony decided to leave them hanging.

He smiled slightly at the small but satisfying act of petty sadism, before turning his full attention to the matter at hand.

"Back already, are we?" he asked, as Rogers sat across the table from him. 

Rogers, expression sombre even by his standards, gestured to Ms. Snow and said flatly, "Show him."

She held out a tablet to Tony, and he stared at it pointedly. It only took her a second - far better than average for a SHIELD agent; they usually had to be told at least twice - to realise he didn't like being handed things.

He had never been overly fond of strangers handing him paperwork - it could always be a court summons for a paternity suit - but since his time in Afghanistan, he had refused to take anything from the hands of anyone other than Pepper, Rhodey, or one of his bots. Before then, he had signed whatever any Stark Industries employee put in front of him... and it had been a horrifying awakening to realise that his signature had been all over the approval documents for a  _ lot _ of Obie's evil schemes, because of his own lack of attention.

It often kept him awake at night, wondering how many lives he could have saved, just by bothering to read the paperwork. Well, now he always read every last line of the fine print.

Or had Pepper do it for him. She was the only one he would trust with that, these days.

He knew the 'don't hand me stuff' rule was irrational: how the paperwork got into his hands didn't change what was in it, and whether or not he signed anything was entirely his own responsibility... but it still gave him the illusion of control over it all the same.

It was also possible that this was another extension of his general aversion to people, since Afghanistan. Torture will do that, or so he'd read. Once again, it was only Pepper, Rhodey, and his bots that he didn't feel uncomfortable within a five foot radius of, these days. He could put up a good front, but it was exhausting.

He wondered if  _ that _ was why Ms Snow here was showing him the courtesy of setting the tablet down on the table, now... he hoped he wasn't that transparent, but he could see  _ something _ in her eyes as she did it, and he was sure it wasn't just mocking his eccentricities.

As soon as she stepped back behind Rogers, again, Tony snatched up the tablet and pressed play. He watched the footage there with a mixture of incredulity and mounting fury.

"You deleted this from my servers?" he asked coldly, once it had finished playing.

"Would you have preferred SHIELD see it?" Snow asked idly.

Tony glared at her, which seemed to have about as much effect as glaring at a wall, then frowned at Rogers. "And we're  _ sure  _ that's not Loki?"

"I'm pretty sure he can't project illusions at that distance," Rogers answered bluntly. "And he hasn't shown a sign of being able to project solid ones, at  _ any _ distance."

"Definitely solid?" Tony asked, more for form than anything else. The evidence was pretty compelling, but it paid to check.

Rogers grimaced. "Definitely," he said. "Guy packed a wallop."

"Well, we'll need to be sure of that. Check with Point-Break when we see him." Tony waved dismissively. "So, pretty little liar here wants us to know your double was HYDRA, why?"

"I wanted you both to know that the STRIKE team are HYDRA, actually," Snow retorted.

"Not denying it, then?" Tony asked her.

She smiled coldly. "I never said I was with SHIELD."

Tony raised an eyebrow, then mentally re-ran their previous conversation. "Uh-huh," he conceded. "Oh, and Snow? Seriously?"

"I'm a bastard," she replied matter-of-factly. "Figuratively speaking and, from a certain point of view, literally as well."

Tony didn't miss the look Rogers gave at Snow's language, but since he didn't comment, neither would Tony. He would, however, save the memory of Rogers’ expression for when he next wanted to needle the man about being old-fashioned. "You know, knowing your father isn't always all it's cracked up to be," he said glibly.

"Now who's lying?" she asked him, smiling coldly.

That remark cut deeper than Tony wanted to admit, so he changed the subject. "So, why exactly are we supposed to trust you? We’ve got teleporting doubles-"

"Note the plural." Tony barely heard her mutter under her breath.

That only added to the headache he was beginning to develop, but he continued regardless. "-of our beloved Capsicle stealing dangerous alien technology, then for some bizarre reason, putting it back again moments later, and a serious infiltration of SHIELD by HYDRA, which surprises me less than it probably should. I don’t know about Rogers here, but I’m not exactly overflowing with trust at the moment. Especially not for someone who’s just popped up out of nowhere, admits to hacking my servers to delete vitally important surveillance footage, admits that she’s using a false name, and won’t say who she is, who she’s working for, or even what she’s really up to."

Snow merely shrugged idly. "When you work for spies, trust is tricky. Give me a week, if I've not won you over by then, I'll leave of my own accord."

"To where?" Tony fired back.

"Somewhere far away, where the fallout of your distrust won't get me killed."

"You're expecting to get killed?" Rogers asked her, concerned. Tony barely restrained himself from rolling his eyes at the unthinking chivalry on display. Rogers of all people should know that this woman, whoever she was, was both deceptive and dangerous.

She looked to Rogers for a moment, before fixing her gaze on Tony in a very unsettling way. "I'm expecting very bad things to happen unless I interfere,” she said with a sort of calm that looked to him like a very good lie, in and of itself. "So if you don't let me help, then I'll do my best to get out of the bad things' way, as well as yours."

Tony hesitated for a moment, the memory of the vision he'd seen through the portal flashing across his mind. She couldn't possibly know about  _ those _ bad things - or at least, he sure as hell hoped not - but HYDRA definitely qualified as bad things, even if you didn’t take into account their apparent infiltration of SHIELD. That, he reckoned, was enough to be getting on with for the time being. At the very least, HYDRA needed to be dealt with. And, he reasoned, if you're going to spy on the spies who spy on spies, why not use someone who was at least entirely upfront about being untrustworthy? Hell, she even wore a Slytherin tie, like she wanted to  _ advertise _ her untrustworthiness.

"Fine," he said, his voice slightly weak from the memory of his vision. "One week."

\---

Thor had been hunting for his brother for four days, when Heimdall sent him a message informing him of Loki's location. The location itself was unexpected, to say the least: a small apartment in New York City, on Midgard. He debated bursting in unannounced, but he rather doubted the rightful owners would appreciate their home becoming part of the collateral damage in the war that his brother had brought down upon their city and their world.

Collateral damage. How he disliked those two words, and would be grateful never to hear them again in his hopefully still very long life. For reasons he could not for the life of him understand, Midgard was obsessed with the monetary number of it. On another world, when Asgard assisted in the defeat of an invader, they would pledge to rebuild what had been destroyed - or assist at the least - and wealth was never really thought of by either group. The arrangement was always intended to favour the world being rebuilt, but in an honourable way that didn't bring the pettiness of finances into the matter. Furthermore, many worlds appreciated the presence of Asgardians during the rebuilding period - as it acted as a deterrent to any other would-be invaders - enough that they would often reward the builders with feasts and wine.

Midgard - or its governments, at least - seemed as if it just wanted to know the number, and had outright refused offers of aid that did not come in the form of currency. It was unsettling.

So, instead of breaking the door down, he rang the bell. As he did, he kept an eye on the potential escape routes, in case his approach drove his brother to flee.

But it did not. Instead, a buzzer sounded, and the door creaked open, allowing him access to the stairwell.

Heimdall had given him the apartment number, and Thor wandered up the five flights of stairs to the right door, and knocked lightly.

The door opened.

He took in the room cautiously, and found it to be quite ordinary for Midgard: a small sitting room, with a large window providing a good view of the battered but unbowed Stark Tower, across six blocks of trade buildings. A couple of doors, presumably leading to a bedroom and bathroom, if this was an average apartment - or at least, what he had come to understand was an average apartment. He had to confess, his knowledge of modern Midgardian dwellings was a work in progress.

The oddest thing about it was that it didn't have one of the televisions that were apparently ubiquitous on this world. It had bookshelves instead.

"Please, brother, let's not fight. I'd hate to lose the deposit on this place." 

Thor whirled, hammer raised, to see Loki calmly closing the door behind him.

"What are you doing here, brother?" Thor demanded, taking in Loki's appearance. His clothing almost resembled Midgardian style now, with pressed trousers, and a button-down shirt in deep green silk. No shoes, just bare feet. That was slightly odd, and Thor took it as a sign of Loki being comfortable enough in this situation not to feel the need to run any time soon, which was both a relief and a worry. A relief because it meant that Thor probably wouldn’t have to chase him, and a worry because, with Loki’s less than stable state of mind and proclivity for the unexpected, it could mean that a very unpleasant surprise awaited him.

"Well, I live here now," Loki said casually. "If it's any consolation, I don't have the Tesseract anymore."

"I am aware," Thor said, frowning at that fact. The Tesseract had appeared in Asgard's treasure vault at some point during the night after the Battle of New York. Not even Heimdall had been able to discern how it got there. No one had been seen entering or leaving either Asgard or the vault in that time, nor could the Tesseract's own energy have been used to do so, as that would have left a trace they could have tracked. They had also gone to great lengths, over the last few days, to confirm that it was indeed the Tesseract and not some sort of fake. "But if anything, that gives me even less reason to trust you now."

"How about you trust it from Heimdall? I'm not using any concealment spells at the moment."

Thor hesitated. While he got the feeling that his brother was telling the truth, unlikely though it was, it was still Loki. There was more to this, there had to be. For starters, why was he suddenly so relaxed, so apparently content to disguise himself as an ordinary resident in the city that he had laid waste to only days before, as a prelude to trying to conquer the world?

There was something else that concerned Thor, also. From the moment Thor found him on Midgard, before and then during the attempted invasion, Loki had seemed quite sickly. He still appeared thinner even than was normal for him, but now his skin was no longer pallid, simply pale. There were no longer the same deep lines under his eyes. Loki appeared  _ healthier _ , now, in spite of it having only been four days. It was deeply saddening to Thor that such concern had to be set aside to deal with the greater threat Loki posed.

"You still need to answer for your crimes, Loki," he said.

Loki rolled his eyes. "Does Mr Barton expect incarceration? What about Doctor Selvig?" Thor was taken aback by this argument, while also ruthlessly crushing the flare of hope at the insinuation that Loki may not have been responsible for the atrocities that he had committed over the last few days; that some other was behind all this. "Besides," Loki continued. "If you really want to keep an eye on my activities here on Earth, you may do so. I won't hide anything. Let Heimdall watch, I'm not shy." There was an odd smile there as he said that, which instantly raised Thor's suspicions - mainly, as to what there may be to be shy about - but then Loki raised a hand in a gesture that simply asked Thor not to interrupt. "I assure you, my intentions are - well I can't say harmless, some people will be harmed - but they are at least benevolent. Even by your standards, brother."

Thor was silent for a long moment. "I doubt it," he said in a low voice. "I wish I could believe you, brother, I really do. I wish I could believe your claim that you were merely another's puppet in this. But even if you truly were acting against your will, there are still other crimes for which you must answer, crimes that were performed long before you could make any claim of being controlled. The evidence is against you, brother. So I most certainly doubt you."

Loki nodded. "Of course you do," he said. "I'd hardly respect you if you didn't. But tell me, if you even suspected a greater threat that could end your life, mine, Asgard's, Earth's... and you did something you knew could help bring about that outcome, wouldn't you be at least a touch upset?"

Thor scowled at this. It was unlike any from Asgard to refer to Midgard as 'Earth', yet Loki had now done so twice. Perhaps it was part of the act of intending to live alongside the mortals, for whatever plan he had in mind, but it was an odd detail, in Thor's mind. Still, Loki was now attempting a common tactic of his; preemptive guilt about a mere possible scenario. Likely a lie as well, but both of them knew that, with the stakes so high as Loki now implied, Thor would never take the chance of ignoring such risk, lest it be true. "What are you saying, brother?"

Loki smirked, but this time, it was a thin mask for something more melancholy, more haunted. "I am saying that that outcome is on its way, and there are only half a dozen ways to avoid it, that I can see. I am sure you can see something changed in me, since the day I fell from the Bifrost: none who think clearly would choose such an ignoble death, yet I am now thinking quite clearly. The threat I foresee is very real, and I'm willing to work with you and your, ah, friends, to ensure my own survival. As I'm sure you like all those innocent beings out there continuing to exist, I hope that you won't interfere. I'll tell you what I can, but sometimes, there will be things that I cannot tell you, because sometimes knowing what course must be taken will make you unable to do so."

Thor rolled his eyes. "You're stalling," he said, hefting Mjolnir.

Loki narrowed his eyes, then bowed his head. "I suppose I am," he said. "In fact, I'm asking your permission to stall for, oh... about six years? And in that time, I swear that if I even lift a finger in a threatening manner, then you may incarcerate me back on Asgard without a trial, and I won’t even try to resist. But until I do, please, just let me be. And maybe don't tell your Avenger friends I'm here?"

"Why not?" Thor asked, frowning at that request.

"Because they are integral to the saving-the-universe plan that I've been drafted into."

Thor frowned at this, "Drafted? By whom?"

"Ah. Now,  _ that _ is complicated-" Loki stopped, eyes darting quickly to the door.

Thor turned around a moment before the door opened, to reveal Captain America. His first thought was to wonder how in the Nine Realms Steve Rogers had known to come here, as he had only been informed of Loki's location, by Heimdall himself, less than an hour ago. Captain Rogers, remarkable soldier though he was, hardly had such resources. His second thought, hot on the heels of the first, was to whirl on Loki, to be ready to step in if Loki tried to either attack Rogers as a prelude to flight, or simply flee outright.

But when he turned his gaze back to Loki, he found not his brother, but a woman sitting where he had been but moments before.

It had been some time since Thor had seen Loki's female form. Almost six centuries, if he recalled correctly. He barely recognised her. She resembled her male form only slightly. In fact, she resembled Frigga somewhat more, albeit younger and with black hair. The attire was slightly altered to a feminine cut but otherwise remained the same. Except her nails - fingers and toes - were now painted dark green to match her shirt.

"Good morning, Captain," she said, standing and smiling slightly. "I've got those personnel files we discussed yesterday."

Steve nodded to Loki, clearly oblivious to her true identity. Or perhaps not - his attitude was polite, but wary, a not uncommon reaction to Loki by those who knew him or, at least, knew of him. "Morning, Gina. Please, call me Steve, everyone else does." He then turned to Thor. "I didn't know you two knew each other?" he asked amiably.

Well, there went all hopes that Steve might have been aware of Loki's identity here.

"Oh, I've been asked to work with all of the Avengers," Loki answered smoothly. "I'll be meeting with Clint and Natasha next week."

Thor blinked twice. Loki was clearly impersonating an agent of SHIELD for some reason. He scowled at her, now. Loki smirked.

"Sorry, Thor. I brought food, but if I'd known you'd been here I'd have brought more," Steve said sheepishly, holding up a box of pastries, before setting it on the nearby coffee table, and then looking to Loki to ask, "So have you told Thor about my double from last week?"

Loki hesitated for half a second, before replying smoothly, "Not yet. Actually, we'd barely got past 'hello'."

"What about the doppelganger, Steve?" Thor asked warily, eyeing Loki with confusion and suspicion.

"Well, we've concluded that it can't have been Loki, as he was in custody in the foyer at the same time." Steve hesitated. "I mean, unless he can project  _ solid _ illusions that far away?"

"No." Thor frowned at Loki. "No, he cannot. And the restraints that were used would also have prevented him from casting  _ any _ form of magic, save the basic level of shapeshifting you witnessed."

"The double's actions revealed to us that certain members of SHIELD are in fact HYDRA spies," Loki explained. She then glanced at Thor, and added, "That's bad."

"That's an understatement," Steve agreed, sounding quite upset about the subject. "HYDRA were responsible for a lot of terrible things, during the War."

Thor nodded slowly. He would accept this from Steve Rogers, even if he would not take Loki's word for it.

Loki picked up some folders from the table, and handed them to Steve. She then reached into the small cardboard box of pastries, and took one of those for herself. Thor spotted five more within the box, and Loki gestured for him to take one as well. He waved away the offer politely, as she continued to speak. Even though he had watched her actions closely, he would never underestimate Loki's poisoning skills. "Those are the details I was able to dig up on the agents in the elevator. I can do some personal recon as well, if you like. I'm very good at face-to-face information gathering." She smiled faintly, before adding, "Not quite on Natasha's level, but I'm up there."

Steve seemed to consider this for a moment, before shaking his head. "No. Don't endanger yourself until we’ve found out as much as we can through other means."

Loki shrugged. "I was actually thinking of walking up to them, and saying 'Hail HYDRA. Captain America, who you pack of total idiots seem to think is evil just like you, has assigned me as his personal liaison to your team'. What do you think?"

Thor spluttered in shock at the bluntness of the approach, as well as the obvious inaccuracies of the quote, which she clearly intended for humour. It wasn't Loki's style at all. Even though it was lying, it was far too straightforward. Then again, so was the way she was currently speaking with Steve.

He saw Loki's smirk flicker back into life at his reaction, before vanishing, but said nothing. She had asked him to keep his mouth shut, so for the time being, he would. He would interrogate her properly later, before seeking counsel in Asgard with his parents, and reveal the truth if and when it was proved a good idea to do so. After all, on the off-chance Loki was telling the truth for a change, it could be vital that he remain quiet for now.

Meanwhile, the expression on Steve's face seemed to war between recognising the humour for what it was, and indignant horror at the plan she appeared to have conjured.

"Well..." Steve said slowly, apparently unaware of the unspoken exchange between the other two people in the room. "I suppose that could work. Give it a day or two, at least, though. And if it does come to that, be careful, and keep me informed at all times."

"Oh, I will," Loki said with a smile. "I will also inform them that, as their superior by a significant number of decades, you have ordered me to keep you informed at all times."

Steve actually laughed, rueful and delighted at the same time. "Oh, that's terrible. Did you just compare me to Schmidt?"

"Why, yes I did," Loki said. "You  _ are  _ of an equivalent era, after all. And besides, an argument could easily be made to these infiltrators that you overthrew him because he betrayed a shared vision of HYDRA's future. Making you outrank even their current leaders."

Steve’s amusement slid off his face in an instant, and now, he stared at her in shock. Then, slowly, reluctantly, he nodded. "You're a monster," he muttered, in a tone that mixed revulsion and admiration.

Loki smiled. "Thank you."

\---

The next morning, Loki found herself sitting in a conference room in Stark Tower, with the entire Avengers team.

The irony was amusing, the way they so easily accepted her as a woman, when little else had been altered about her appearance, not even favoured colours. This form wasn't one of Loki's illusions, it was full-blown shapeshifting, which meant once she had assumed the new form it would require active effort to change it again. It was both more comfortable and significantly easier to maintain than a long-term illusion. It was also a  _ human _ form, so as to fool any scanners they may use to try to determine her identity - she was capable enough of shifting back quickly that she didn't fear being harmed while in this more vulnerable form, and the deception was vital to gain their trust.

_ It was Steve Rogers who had insisted upon explaining the truth to them. "However mad it seems, it's better than lying to the people we trust." _

_ Loki had met his eyes and asked simply, "Trust? And whom do you trust?" _

_ He hadn't hesitated to reply, "My team." _

Now, however, she found that she didn't really want to explain it. The lies she told so often made much more sense. As the Midgard saying went, truth was stranger than fiction, and trite as it was, it was true. Fiction, after all, was expected to make sense.

Thor was giving her the most vicious look possible. The only person in this room to know her true identity, but he had agreed to keep quiet in return for a lack of immediately recognisable evil schemes on Loki's part. 

Of course, she mused, it was difficult to avoid schemes given certain circumstances... they just were't all that evil, for a change.

"Are we sure about this, Gina?" Steve Rogers asked.

Of the eight people that Loki had been told could be trusted with this secret, six were present. And no one else. Loki was a master of concealment and illusions, and she had thoroughly checked the room before hosting the meeting.

"Yes. Everyone in this room can be trusted with this information." She was being specific. This information, not necessarily other things.

Thor noticed the exact words, and his glower somehow managed to intensify.

Tony was also scowling, but his was more widely spread, taking in the entire room. "Even the spy kids over here?" he demanded, indicating Clint and Natasha.

"Who better to keep this kind of secret than those who tell more lies than truth?" Loki asked bluntly.

Natasha arched an eyebrow at her for that. Clearly she was suspicious as well.

"I'll start with the unbelievable truth, before we get into the provable facts," Loki said. "I have knowledge from the future. That knowledge comes from an informant who has shown me certain events that must come to pass to secure the survival of not only humanity, but the universe at large."

Thor spluttered, hostility vanishing into disbelief. 

"You're right,” Natasha said, tone completely deadpan. “That  _ is  _ unbelievable."

"Definitely unlikely," Banner said, and as he spoke, Loki had to work to suppress a shudder. Most would find it hard to imagine that the small and unassuming man before her could become an enormously powerful rampaging beast in the merest blink of an eye. Loki, by contrast, having been handled like a child’s rattle by the beast in question, found it very hard to forget.

"Prove it," Tony challenged.

"Well that's the trouble: anything I could tell you as proof won't happen for a while yet," Loki bit back.

"Try me, bastard queen," Tony sniped.

Loki smiled viciously. "Jon Snow dies."

"That's in the books," Tony retorted.

"He comes back."

That surprised Tony, and he couldn't seem to stop himself from asking, "What? How? When?"

"Well, the novels never get finished, because of the apocalypse I'm trying to help you prevent... but twenty-sixteen, I think, on the TV show."

Clint slowly lowered his head to the table, and allowed it to connect with the solid wood loudly enough to draw everyone's attention, then just as slowly looked up at the rest of them. "We need to prevent this apocalypse, guys," he said. He may well have been perfectly serious, but he was also quite obviously mockingly insinuating the motive was to save one writer not the whole universe.

"I'm still not convinced," Tony persisted. "There's always another big threat, but what exactly are you suggesting?"

Loki leaned forward across the table, a dark smile on her lips. "You've seen it,” she said. “You're already thinking about it. 'A suit of armour around the world'."

Tony blinked, but credit to him, did nothing more than that. "Good guess. Better than most 'psychics'," he conceded.

"Yes, of course, it's a guess," she sniped sarcastically, before turning to Thor. "You know the convergence is coming in a year... there's still one Svartalfbatur hidden, waiting for it."

"That's not necessarily fortune telling," Thor retorted. "You could have learned that from the present."

Loki rolled her eyes, exasperated by his - admittedly understandable - scepticism. "Jane Foster will find the Aether."

Thor stared in shock.

"Do you think I could arrange for that to happen?" Loki sniped.

"No," he murmured softly, apparently stunned. "No, I do not."

"Good, there's your bit of fortune-telling, then," she muttered bitterly.

"Anything else?" Banner asked her. "I mean, anything more immediate?"

"Well we've got HYDRA intelligence - oxymoron that it is - to be getting on with," Loki observed. "By the time we're done with that, I'll be proved right about the Aether."

"And then will you tell us who your informant is?" Steve asked.

Loki smiled at him. "It's cute you're the one who keeps asking that."

\---


	2. Winter is Coming Home

\---

Thor sighed deeply, as he led the way into Odin's throne room. With the Tesseract returned to Asgard, it had not taken long to repair the Bifrost, and as soon as that was done, he and Loki had been summoned.

He had been certain that Loki was up to something - he always was - but this? This was simply... simply insane. Unbelievable. Impossible. Unless it was true, of course. If that was the case, it was positively terrifying.

Loki had not changed his story, nor given any new information, during the week since their meeting with the Avengers. He had, in fact, been quite quiet. Heimdall reported that the most nefarious thing Loki had done since Thor had confronted him in the apartment, was encouraging the young child of one of his new neighbours to pursue artistic talents in spite of the parents' disapproval.

Heimdall told Thor that Loki had run into the child quite by accident, in the stairwell of the building, on the way back to the apartment... with groceries, of all things. The child had been throwing a tantrum, upset at being told to abandon this pursuit in favour of academics, and Loki had simply suggested, 'why not do both?'

It seemed a trivial thing, and if it was the worst Loki had done in the last week, then that was a pleasant surprise. Heimdall only even mentioned it because Thor had asked specifically if Loki had done anything subversive, and Heimdall felt this counted... though the hint of irony in his tone suggested he was completely aware of how minor it was. To Heimdall it was (perhaps) a subversion of the parents' orders... to Thor, well he would like to believe Loki was simply comforting - perhaps even empathising with - an upset child.

Of course, with Loki, one could never tell. Yet, it was strangely mundane, in the grand scheme of things, especially if Loki's story was true. Somehow, if it was indeed meant to be kind, that made it mean even more.

Now, Loki followed Thor into the throne room, wearing his more normal Asgardian attire; no helmet, nor any of the grandiose kingly regalia he had previously adopted. Half a dozen Einherhar flanked him, but he didn't seem to be bothered by that in the slightest. This, Thor thought, was worrying in itself.

Drawing himself out of his thoughts, he looked up to the throne, and was pleased to see his mother standing beside it. Frigga had always been a great witch, a wise seer, and an even wiser adviser. If anything Loki said was true, she would know, and she would counsel Odin on the correct course of action. Undoubtedly, he thought - or, if he was being honest with himself, hoped - that would be something other than Loki's insane plan.

Loki had the courtesy to kneel, a step behind and to the left of Thor as he himself knelt, once they had approached the throne.

Slowly, Frigga descended the steps to meet them, first pulling Thor to his feet and embracing him, then doing the same for Loki, with no sign of either disdain or shame - just relief, and regret.

"My sons, I am glad to see you both well." She cupped Loki's face in her hands and looked him in the eye for several long moments. Then, she nodded slowly. "I see you finally found a reason to take your talents seriously, Loki."

Loki looked away, apparently ashamed.

"Oh, that was a compliment," Frigga chided. "Of course your behaviour on Midgard began poorly, but one cannot be wholly blamed when one is unwillingly under the influence, can one?" This last was said with a pointed look at Odin, whose impassive expression did not change. But Thor, with some of the perception he felt he’d developed on Earth, noticed a brief flicker of acknowledgement in his eye.

"You... believe me?" Loki asked, sounding both surprised and deeply relieved. "But... I didn't even try to explain?"

"You of all people should know I see with more than eyes, Loki," Frigga replied calmly. "I taught you everything that you know about magic. What I did _ not _ teach was everything that _ I _know. There is still much for you to learn, my son."

"And what, exactly, do you see about my more recent plans?" Loki asked warily.

Frigga laughed, and it sounded quite genuine. "Aside from the fact they're not entirely _ your _ plans?" she asked. "I think if you follow this path it will do you good. It should even do us all some good as well."

"Oh dear, now I want to refuse," Loki muttered, only half sarcastic.

Frigga gave him a _ look_, the kind that had nothing to do with being a mage and everything to do with being a mother, and wisely, Loki held his hands up in surrender.

As if by some unspoken agreement, all now turned to face Odin, who only once the attention was fully upon him, slowly stood up, Gungnir echoing as it struck the floor beside the throne, and he descended the stairs to stand before his wife and sons. As he did, Thor felt that if his fellow Avengers ever accused him of being dramatic again, then he could say that he had come by _ that _particular trait honestly. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a small, wry, smirk flicker across Loki’s face. Clearly, he had not been the only one thinking along those lines, which both pleased him and worried him more than he wanted to admit.

"If my wife says that your path is a wise, even a noble one, and that you were not wholly at fault for your recent actions on Midgard, then, it seems to me imprisonment is not conducive to it," Odin said. His expression hardened. "Though its prospect should serve as an excellent deterrent. And there is also the matter of the events before you fell to consider. You allowed Frost Giants into Asgard, into our most secure vaults, knowing that they would die and what their incursion would inspire in your brother, simply out of petty spite. You encouraged your brother’s foolishness in inciting war with Jotunheim. You tried to _ kill _ your brother, Lady Sif, and the Warriors Three, as well as devastating a Midgardian town simply because that was where Thor was. You lured Laufey here with the prospect of assassinating me, to assassinate him in turn. You assaulted Heimdall, and tried to _ destroy _ Jotunheim. You attempted _ genocide_, Loki, something that only your brother’s destruction of the Bifrost prevented, something which has crippled Asgard’s military and diplomatic capabilities and thrown the Nine Realms into chaos. Your litany of crimes is a long one, and their consequences longer. You were not bewitched then, Loki, nor, for much of it, did you even have the small excuse of the shock of discovering your heritage. You have _ much _to answer for."

Loki opened his mouth to speak, but then hesitated, not wanting to do so out of place. When Odin gave a curt nod, Loki spoke, slowly and with care. This would be difficult for even his silver tongue to answer for, without sounding like self-justification or mere excuses.

"I understand now that what I did was wrong," he began. "Truly, I do. And I have no desire to cast that blame upon any but myself. Nothing I say can repair the harm I have done, but I wish you to know that I have learned from my misdeeds. First, when all this began, I saw the Jotuns only as the monsters that we had been told all our lives to hate and fear. We grew up on stories of war and conquest. Every time the Jotuns were spoken of, it was as vile creatures deserving no mercy. No one told Thor off for swearing as a child that he would kill them all with his bare hands. No one bothered to sit down and explain to us the difference between those stories and the truth of the matter. It was easy to consider the Jotuns... expendable, at best. I did not think that the guards might enter the vault, nor did I consider the possibility that they could be bested by the Jotuns if they had. I was sincere in my shock at their deaths. I merely assumed the Destroyer would do its job and Thor would lose his temper. I never intended any of us to actually _ go _ to Jotunheim; I told a guard to warn you of Thor's plan, expecting to be stopped before we could even get to Heimdall. My only goal at that point was for Thor to expose, through his own angry and impulsive words, the fact that he was not yet ready for the throne. Which, frankly, he wasn't."

Thor grunted, accepting that this was so, and Odin raised an eyebrow. "And you felt that you were? That you were the better candidate?" he asked in deceptively mild tones.

"Honestly? Yes," Loki admitted. "However, I had no particular designs on the throne for myself. I did not anticipate either Thor's exile, nor your untimely fall into the Odinsleep, only that his coronation should be delayed. I understand in hindsight that it was petty and ill-considered, but at the time I thought the revelation that Thor was, in my opinion, a spoiled child who in wielding a hammer thought all problems resembled nails, would be for the good of Asgard."

Thor surprised himself by snorting at that description, barely resisting the instinct to laugh. It was, in retrospect, quite an accurate summary of his attitude at the time, though he had certainly grown since then. Both Odin and Loki glanced his way at that, Odin with a slight frown that showed both irritation and deep thought, and Loki with a faint smile that seemed to suggest the insult was now intended affectionately, rather than truly unkind.

"It is true that I learned valuable lessons from my banishment, brief as it was," Thor pointed out.

Odin’s expression remained non-committal, so Loki sighed, and continued.

"After that, everything fell out of my control. I was _ handed _ Gungnir as we were on the brink of war with Jotunheim. I needed to find a way to fix the damage I had caused... and besides, I feared the punishment that I would rightfully face for my actions thus far, and wished to hide the evidence before either you awoke or Thor returned. I lied to Thor, in the hopes of tricking him into extending his exile, and refused to overturn your last command when his friends asked me to. I didn't think they would go so far as treason, nevermind that Heimdall would accommodate them... though perhaps after our visit to Jotunheim I shouldn't have been surprised. In hindsight, I am honestly unsure of exactly why I sent the Destroyer; I was angry and afraid. I never intended to kill Thor, nor his friends, but then... I lashed out. It was not a calculated move; it was a reaction born of petulance, anger, and resentment, at how Thor so easily found acceptance even when stripped of his power on Midgard, supposedly the backwater of the Nine Realms, when I felt that I did not belong anywhere. I'm sure you know how fragile mortals are, but I did not think of it. The blow from the Destroyer was intended to send him to one of Midgard's hospitals, not-" Loki shook his head, and looked away, clearly truly ashamed of that moment.

"All of this was made worse by my discovery that I was born a Frost Giant. Believing myself to be a monster made it feel much easier to act as one. I wanted to deny what I had learned, and my admittedly warped reasoning was that if there was no Jotunheim, and if there were no Frost Giants - especially Laufey - then I could not be a Frost Giant... after all, there would be none left." Loki's voice changed pitch to an ironic mutter, as he seemed to add more to himself than anyone else, "Which only adds to Steve Rogers' list of good reasons to punch me, really."

Then he shook his head again, and continued in his normal voice. "Slaying Laufey, however dishonourably, also happened to end the war I inadvertently started by provoking Thor, though I admit I was not thinking of that at the time. There is no excuse - by then I was lost to rage and despair - I chose to fall from the Bifrost for the same reason." As Loki spoke, he kept his head bowed, perhaps not wanting to see the look on Odin's face at his confession. "I..." He hesitated. "I wanted to make you proud. I craved your approval, and it was easy to blame my newly discovered heritage for the lack of it. I suppose I also thought that killing Laufey would prove I chose you over him... that I was truly not his, and so you could finally accept me. That need for your approval was something that both Thor and I shared, but I always imagined the fact he won it meant that I lost. I understand now that I have brought that loss upon myself."

And finally, Loki looked up at Odin. "I will do whatever you command, in atonement, willingly and without complaint," he said earnestly. "But please, Allfather, allow me to express the urgency of the matter that currently faces us: I have seen a vision of the future, in which awaits a great threat, not only to Asgard, or the Nine Realms, but the entire universe. I understand that my own failures have helped lead to this possible future, and will do all in my power - with your permission of course - to help prevent it from coming to pass."

This surprised everyone present, except for Frigga, who was just giving Loki the same look Thor had earlier given Odin when the Allfather was being melodramatic.

"And what, may I ask, has changed your opinion so greatly, Loki?" Odin said, a wary tone in his voice now. "It was little more than a year ago that you did these things, and laughed about it. What you claim you intended, and what you did, cannot be so different."

Loki frowned, bowing his head. "That is a fair question, Allfather," he said eventually. "I suppose you could say I have gained a new perspective." It was a vague statement at best, but if he had information from the future, that could well make sense, in Thor's opinion at least.

Frigga chose this moment to step closer to Odin, and whispered something to him. Her hand covered her mouth, so not even those with a talent for reading lips could tell what she said. Odin looked to her with a frown, and she raised one eyebrow in an expression that seemed to clearly say, 'You know I'm right; are we really going to argue about this?'

Odin sighed heavily, and his gaze returned to Loki.

"We shall see," Odin said slowly. "Thor, you shall keep a watchful eye on your brother. I will know if he betrays our trust again."

Thor bowed to Odin. "Yes, father."

"This is your last chance, Loki," Odin warned.

Loki bowed silently, acknowledging his good fortune in receiving another chance, as well as both the implicit mercy, and the implied threat should he betray it.

"And Thor," Odin said, pausing only long enough for Thor to look directly at him, before saying with a heartfelt smile. "You did well on Midgard. I am sure you will again."

\---

"Hail HYDRA," Loki said, with a perky sort of cheer that seemed to confuse the men in the room she had just entered.

But they all responded in kind, regardless of her apparently unmerited enthusiasm, with a chorus of "Hail HYDRA" of their own.

"I know it's been a while, but you know how cleanup operations go," she said brightly, approaching the ranking agent in the room. He was the leader of the STRIKE team, a particularly muscular specimen named Rumlow. Loki automatically disliked men with too many muscles; she had a tendency to put them in the same category as her brother, that of ‘blockhead’, even if their alignments and morals were elsewhere. Though she had to concede, the comparison wasn’t entirely fair: Thor was actually demonstrating more than a little intelligence and self-awareness these days, suggesting that it was less that he had lacked brains, more that he had not previously thought to use them. His time on Midgard, and that young woman of his, Jane Foster, had been good for him. "Cap sent me to discuss that little incident in the elevator."

Rumlow glanced over at his fellow STRIKE team members, who were all wearing the same surprised expression that he was. Clearly, Loki reflected, when these particular heads of HYDRA had been grown, they’d all been sharing the same brain - and not a very large one, either. Rumlow then turned his full attention back to Loki. "I was wondering when we'd hear about this," he said, smirking faintly as if silently adding 'this ought to be good'.

"It's one of those 'need to know' things," Loki explained, still deliberately too-cheerful. It was confusing them all so much, and that just made her feel genuinely cheerful, because, frankly, she was enjoying this. It was shallow compared to her usual schemes, but then the HYDRA situation was only the very surface layer of her current plans. "He's been in deep cover since the forties."

"Thought we were founded by Nazis?" one particularly tactless minion asked in confusion. That one, Loki thought, had clearly got the least brain when it had been divided up.

"HYDRA is an ancient organisation, dating back far before last century, seeking to better humanity by taking a firm grip on the reins and guiding it away from self-destructive little notions like individuality and freedom," Loki said coolly, masking her pleasure. This kind of speech, weaving a web of lies and misrepresented truths, spinning a tale that was completely false, but nevertheless seemed to be entirely plausible - often more plausible than the actual truth. She was in her element, and unlike the last time, these men were eagerly hanging on her words, like fish on hooks. All she had to do was reel them in.

"Wouldn't it seem foolish to you to have agents within only one government?” she asked rhetorically. "One government, ruled by an unstable egomaniac, surrounded by enemies on two sides and an ally that was utterly useless on a third? Of course it would. The Nazis were simply a convenient vehicle for our aspirations in Europe. They thought that we were a simple part of their war-machine, and we allowed them to think that, because it suited us. Johann Schmidt was the first to use Erskine's formula, but it was imperfect, and frankly, so was he. It went to his head... somewhat literally. Steve Rogers was the second recipient, because _ we _ wanted him to be. Unlike Schmidt, he was chosen and carefully groomed for the role. He knew his place in the bigger picture, and did what was required of him: Schmidt betrayed us, so he had to be eliminated. Now, his role is both different and much the same. While he doesn’t have a single clear enemy to lead the gullible against-" _ yet_, Loki thought privately, considering the true greater evil of Thanos, "-he still does what he has always done - work for the greater good of HYDRA, and thus, the world."

The HYDRA agents in the room were watching her with shock and awe, now. "But-" the one who had asked about Nazis began to protest, and Loki spoke across him.

"If we were truly built in Schmidt's image, would we not have tried to finish his work, instead of digging in and concealing ourselves properly?" she asked, her gaze fixed on the one who had dared question her. "It was a convenient story to get our tentacles into Project Paperclip, and I suppose it stuck for that reason. Still, there has always been a _ much _ bigger picture."

"Who else knows this?" Rumlow asked, his awed tone showing he believed her wholeheartedly.

"You don't need to know," she said calmly.

HYDRA agents were used to cell-based operations, not always knowing who was who until the code-phrase was whispered in their ear, and often being very aware of what happened if someone questioned their superiors, so none of them were bothered by this. Instead they all slowly nodded their assent. Indeed, she thought with some amusement, they were likely feeling _ honoured _that they had been let in on the great secret of this edited version of the Captain's history.

"So what does Cap need us to do?" Rumlow asked, all business again.

Loki smiled brightly at their compliance. "For now, all we need is a full report on the Sceptre. It could have unknown side-effects, and we want to ensure you're all on our side and not under the influence of something... _else_." She trailed off meaningfully, letting the words hang in the air, allowing their imaginations to fill in the blanks rather than clarifying the exact nature of the threats she knew the Sceptre truly posed.

A flash of fear crossed a fair few faces in the room, and without a moment of hesitation or a word of protest, Rumlow proceeded to tell her every detail of his team's time in possession of the Sceptre.

\---

Clint was riled by the way this strange new woman had managed to convince the team that she needed to see them all in action before revealing her secrets to them. Doubly so by the fact her secret was so absurd.

No one could know the future. It was the future: by definition, it hadn't happened yet. Therefore, you couldn’t know it. But she claimed she did.

It didn't help matters that she _ didn't exist_.

Clint and Natasha between them were among the best at digging up histories people wanted to keep buried. Their only previous failure had been Natasha's own past before she turned eighteen. She had memories, but that wasn't enough to find a place and people that had been erased from all record.

But there was _ nothing _ on Regina Snow. Even knowing her name was false didn’t help; there was still nothing to match her biometrics, though she did appear human... to JARVIS’ sensors, at any rate.

Clint reluctantly accepted Natasha's judgement, and agreed to allow Regina to watch them in practice and training. It had only been a month, and this was the first time he had picked up his bow since the invasion.

"No tech. No tricks. Just skill," he heard her say, after his third arrow hit the bullseye. Third arrow fired, third bullseye. He hadn't lost anything from the last month's downtime. "That's a very rare thing."

"Was that a compliment?" he asked her coldly.

"Most people have tricks," she shrugged.

Nat was standing behind her as she sat on the bench in the training room. He saw her eyes dart upwards to the side, acknowledging Nat's presence without directly facing her.

"Including you?" Nat asked casually.

"Naturally."

Clint shook his head, and turned to aim his bow at them. Nat was to Regina's right. The arrow passed close enough to the left side of Regina's face that he was sure anyone else should have flinched. Neither woman did.

Nat trusted him, but why did Regina not react to such a direct threat?

Clint thought about the instant the arrow passed her. It wasn't a flinch, but her eyes had darted left at the _ exact _ moment it would have struck her had his aim been off. It reminded him of pigeons and cars. The pigeons never got out of the way until the absolute last second, and it was a popular theory that they perceived time differently, that their awareness was just that fast that they didn't even feel threatened until the car was almost upon them.

Worse, it reminded him of the Battle of New York, when Loki had caught his arrow without so much as looking.

No one was that good. No one human, anyway, which left him feeling even more uneasy. Then again, she had tacitly admitted to having tricks to substitute for natural skill. But that still left the question of just what those tricks were. And he knew without looking that Nat was wondering the exact same thing.

"Can't decide if you’re fearless or too observant," he muttered darkly, turning back to his practice.

Nat took over the conversation. "So where are you from, Regina?"

Regina looked up at Nat with amusement in her eyes. "How would you answer that?" Nat’s eyes flickered in a way that very few would notice, but before she could retort Regina continued with a dismissive shrug. "Like you, most probably, I don't remember exactly where I came from."

There was something about the way she said that, which resonated with both spies. She couldn't remember _ exactly_. Meaning she did know generally.

"I'm from Russia, how about you?" Nat prompted.

The reply was drier than desert sand. "Somewhere just as cold."

"Picked Snow for a reason, huh?" Clint asked, amused at the obvious reference. He paused his practice to replace his target. He'd killed the bullseye with too many arrows hitting too close together.

"Yes. Several."

"Books or TV?" he asked casually, recalling the _ Game of Thrones _ conversation from Tony's conference room.

"TV."

"You said you know what happens after _ A Dance With Dragons_?"

"I know some of what happened on the TV show," she clarified.

"Snow means bastard. You said as much to Tony," Nat said, pushing, looking to get the woman off-balance. Going by the preternatural calm she projected, which seemed to border on apathy, it wasn’t working.

"I'm not the only person in this room who's never met their father," she retorted, looking up at Nat as she said it.

"Never met?" Nat prodded, "So you know who yours is?"

The woman smirked, and looked at Clint before answering. "Rhaegar."

Clint stopped himself from firing another arrow, because she had just succeeded in throwing him off, and he wasn't willing to prove it for her. He snorted. "Cute. Real cute," he muttered sarcastically.

"I don't get it," Nat said.

Clint watched Regina carefully as he answered, "It's a popular theory that Rhaegar Targaryen is Jon Snow's real father, making him the rightful King of Westeros."

"Yes, that is a popular theory," she said with a grin that told him beyond all doubt that it was more than mere theory.

"Damn, woman!" he protested. "Spoilers!"

She laughed and it seemed sincere, albeit full of schadenfreude... but the calculating look never truly left her eyes.

"You made it clear your 'future information' came from someone else," Nat observed coolly. "How do you know trivial details like this?"

"It's difficult to explain," Regina said. "And you might not believe it, but you're in luck; this is one of the things I absolutely _ can _ tell you about and don't need to play coy. You see, there's a trick. A way to share memories. It's extremely dangerous, but they felt the circumstances were dire enough to risk it. My informant showed me pieces of the future to prove how important my mission here was, but they didn't have full control over the method of transfer, and I guess they felt oversharing was better than missing something important. So, among a few other personal details, I got the highlights of a certain individual's unreasonable fixation on _ Game of Thrones_."

"Whose 'unreasonable fixation'?" Clint asked dubiously.

"Yours," she smiled, clearly recalling something amusing. " '_Sorry guys, I'm a bit off this morning. Still can't believe Daenerys did that, last night' _. You looked like you hadn't slept. You looked like a very important mission went very bad. Details ensued, but you just said you don't want spoilers, so..." she shrugged.

Clint stared at her for several long moments. Her impersonation of him had been a bit too on-point, almost perfect accent and inflection.

And she was right, he didn't want spoilers... but at the same time a part of him wanted to interrogate her for every least detail. He restrained himself, reluctantly, and feigned nonchalance. "It's not a fixation. It's just so much less duplicitous and underhanded than my day job; I enjoy the break."

"You've got a point there," Regina agreed. "Compared to reality, the machinations of Westeros are little more than a children's game."

Nat also smiled faintly at this sentiment, and Clint cocked an eyebrow. Had Regina just wrangled them into a bonding moment? Damn, she was good.

\---

One month after the Invasion of New York, Steve was sitting in his quarters at SHIELD's New York base, relaxing and reading a novel.

Stark had warned him rather emphatically off of reading _ A Game of Thrones_, in spite of Gina's apparent interest in the subject matter, so he had picked up something else instead.

_Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone_. It was a kids' book, but the bookstore clerk had told him it was popular with all ages and dealt with the epic themes of good versus evil, so he'd figured why not.

A knock on the door drew him away from Harry's first potions lesson, and he called out, "It's open."

Gina entered the room, and wandered over to lean on the back of his chair and look at his chosen reading material. Then with an oddly wistful tone, she half-whispered, half-sang, a quote from the previous chapter, "_ 'Perhaps in Slytherin you'll make your real friends, those cunning folks use any means to achieve their ends' _." She had a very nice singing voice, he noticed... melodic, in a way that could almost be called enchanting.

Steve slowly closed his book and looked up at her, carefully evaluating. She was wearing the same tie as her first day in Stark Tower, and he now saw the significance of it. Was this what his life would be like from now on? Popular culture as a country-wide in-joke he just didn't get; never knowing if they're trying to laugh at or with him, until he went away and did the homework? It only served to add to the already unpleasant feelings of being out of his proper time.

"That's the problem, though, isn't it?" he told her. "The ends don't always justify the means."

"How far would you go to save an innocent life, Captain?" she asked slyly. "What would you be willing to sacrifice?"

He frowned at her. "I would sacrifice myself. Not others," he said pointedly.

Surprisingly, Gina smiled. "There's always a line," she admitted. "I wonder where yours is, regarding the definition of 'worth saving'."

"The more we talk, the more certain I am that I'm going to hate it when you tell me your real name," he said bluntly. "You clearly _ choose _ to identify with the villainous characters-"

"_Vilified _ characters," she corrected. "Notice where the hero gets his information from. There's two sides to every story. Harry is a child, only just learning about a whole new world, and that makes him an unreliable narrator."

"If you're going to side with Voldemort-"

"Oh, no," she cut him off with a cold laugh. "Fiction and fairy tales have the charming advantage of imagining the existence of 'absolute evil', and he certainly embodies it," she said, as if that in itself was somehow amusing to her. "But what about the child who's just been told he's a monster, because a bit of enchanted cloth thinks he's more ambitious than brave? What if little Miss Weasley ended up in Slytherin?"

Steve blinked. "Does she?" he asked, only vaguely remembering the girl's brief appearance in the book so far, but her family had been described in far more detail as explicitly proud to be Gryffindors.

"Does it matter to this conversation?" Gina asked, and fair enough, her question was hypothetical.

"I suppose not," he said, frowning as he thought about it. The analogy made him uncomfortable. The possibility of a child, even in this fictional setting, being - or even just feeling - rejected because they didn't live up to some ridiculous traditional expectation. It did feel wrong. The fact it easily translated into the real world, where people could be far crueller... that almost hurt to think about.

"My family are Gryffindors, too," she said softly.

Steve shook his head, trying to dispel his discomfort at her words. It didn't work.

Gina seemed to notice this, and pressed the issue, "It's cute you think you're _ not _ Slytherin, really."

Steve looked up, glaring at her coldly now. This was the second time she'd called his behaviour 'cute', and he really didn't like the way she did that.

"I don't see how you think I possibly could be," he retorted.

"Right, 'cause you had nothing to prove." That hit a bit too close to home for Steve. He remembered Bucky saying almost those exact words, when he had been trying to sign up to the army, at the Stark Expo. All those years ago... and yet, from his perspective, it was still so recent. Not to mention, he had just read the Sorting Hat telling Harry that his Slytherin quality was a thirst to prove himself. "Sure, the brave and noble types always lie on their application forms and to the faces of government officials, time after time," Gina added with deep sarcasm. Steve was stunned that she knew about that, but she didn't stop there. She dropped the sarcasm, and continued, "Sure, it was brave to let a defecting enemy scientist experiment on you, for the greater good, but it was also your only ticket into the fight. Not to mention all that propaganda you helped sell - you knew it was a cheap game, but it was necessary to play along. You did what you had to, to achieve your ambition. The fact that ambition was to serve your country like a good soldier doesn't change the underhanded way you got there."

"How do you know all that?" he asked her coldly.

"That's what I do. I know things." She grinned, and he got the feeling that this was another in-joke. "If Hogwarts were real, there's a fairly decent chance I'd be in Ravenclaw. I just like the _ idea _ of Slytherin better."

Steve snorted, not sure if he should laugh or be horrified by this whole conversation. "And if Hogwarts were real, I'd do what Harry did," he said bluntly, looking up at her with firm determination. "Not Slytherin."

Gina actually laughed at that. "Fair enough."

"I'm going to start calling you Ginny," he mock-threatened.

"Stark has called me worse," she replied idly.

Steve shook his head, and decided to change the subject. "So where have you been?" he asked, trying to restore some degree of professional distance to the conversation. He really didn't want to think about some of the implications of what she had just told him, right now.

"I've got another list of names for our evil HYDRA plot," she said, handing yet another folder to him. He was going to need to buy a filing cabinet just to keep track of this one project. "And some good news for you: one of those names is very high-ranking. I got a meeting with him, and dropped Bucky's name. I know where he is."

Steve's eyes lit up at this, and he looked at her with hope. "When can we go?"

"Whenever we want," she said, with a laugh that felt like it was at someone's expense, but not Steve's. "I convinced this very powerful man that you've been his boss for over half a century."

"I still hate that tactic," Steve muttered.

"But it's working."

"I know," he frowned. "Let's go get Bucky back."

\---

The ice melted and the Soldier woke.

The same room, but not the same people.

He felt like he should know the man, but neither of the two were his usual handlers, so it didn't matter.

He waited for the key-phrases. He knew the protocol, seared into his brain: wait one minute, then if he didn't hear the correct words, he would attack.

The woman stepped closer, and he saw the dark intent of an operative in her eyes.

He expected her to speak the words, but instead she reached a hand up to the side of his face, gently pushing back his hair... and when her fingertips touched his temple it felt like a lance of ice through his mind.

Something broke, and he fell back into darkness.

\---

One doesn't read a mind. It's not a book.

Occasionally surface thoughts come through like spoken words, but usually it's flashes of images, scents, flavours, sounds, sensations. Often connections are drawn between things that have no right to be connected: a few words of a song can easily send you off down a specific memory in which the song never even played.

It's never tidy, but the Winter Soldier's mind was... different.

Connections that would normally lead to memories instead led to sets of cold and immutable rules. Sounds and smells that should trigger positive emotions were cut off and choked until they couldn't even be named.

The repeating theme was painful and desperate, but a few older elements still lay visible on the surface. Habits from youth were easy to recognise as different from the harsh commands HYDRA had so cruelly carved into him.

_Go with the flow, don't make waves. Only get involved when you have to._

James Buchanan 'Bucky' Barnes had always been, Loki quickly pieced together, a person who did what he was told to, and laughed about having a choice. Go with the flow... it's easier than fighting, make those around him happy and he'll become happy. And as Loki picked through the pieces of his memories, it became clear that this way of living had mostly worked out for him... until the war.

He wasn't a doormat, though. He did have his own opinions and standards, and he was of the opinion that what those who tried to tell him what to do didn't know wasn't really their problem. It was just easier to make nice, to those who he meant to keep around.

What was Right took second place to what was Easy... but there were many times when it was easy enough to do what was right. And there was always an exception to the rule.

_Loyalty's hard to find. If you do, hold on to it like a life preserver on the Titanic._

That had led to his friendship with Steve Rogers. They were like brothers, in a way Loki had never experienced, or even seen before. There may be a superficial resemblance between their relationship and Loki's feelings for Thor, but what Bucky felt for Steve went far, far deeper. In part, that was likely because Loki had not been given the choice but to stand in Thor's shadow and resented it in spite of good reasons to love his brother, while Bucky wilfully chose Steve as his closest friend in spite of good reasons to avoid such a trouble-magnet.

That loyalty overrode his usual easy choices; he would quite literally follow Steve into hell and back, if asked.

Still, it takes a certain degree of active disinterest in argument to react the way he did to Steve's transformation: _ "Didn't you used to be smaller?" _ as casual as you please, when first seeing the changes, and _ "You don't have one of those, do you?" _ when seeing the Red Skull's face, not even really bothered by the imagined possibility the answer could have been yes.

There was some physical memory loss - electric shocks applied directly to the brain are generally ill-advised for a reason - but not nearly as much as might be assumed. Mostly, there were mental blocks, because remembering his past caused pain.

Resistance caused pain.

Avoiding pain had become the top priority when he had been taken by HYDRA.

Oh, he had tried to resist at first, tried to escape, but the moment that put an end to that was the news of Steve Rogers' 'death'.

The Steve Rogers of the other timeline had read HYDRA's files, but balked at the first detailed descriptions of torture, and not dared keep reading to get all the important information. He just accepted 'brainwashing' and left it at that.

Loki read the whole damned thing, and then looked into Bucky's mind, just to be sure.

They tortured him, of course, and at first the orders were simple...

Say the words.

Refuse, and resume the torture. He refused the first five times, but finally he gave in. It was only words, he wasn't required to mean them.

Execute a prisoner.

Refuse, and they would execute the prisoner right in front of him... slowly and painfully. Then he would be tortured again for the disobedience. He only refused that order the first time. At least when he obeyed, it was quick and painless, for both himself and his victim.

Go fetch something from another, nearby compound.

It wasn't even an important item, it was a test. He 'failed' that test a dozen times. Tried to escape the second he was out in the open air the first time. Planned further escape attempts more carefully with each successive opportunity. He was recaptured within seconds of disobedience, every time. Eventually, he stopped trying to escape. It only led to more torture.

Escort prisoners from one compound to the other.

These prisoners were all genuine enemies of HYDRA, but what he hadn't known - what Loki had read in the files - was that they had also all been told that if they could kill their escort they would win their freedom. Obviously a lie, but they all predictably tried. He tried to let the first one go anyway, but the prisoner still attacked him, in the vain hope of winning their freedom the hard way. Ungrateful. Took him by surprise, succeeded in wounding him, and was shot dead by a HYDRA sentry. He was tortured for the failure. He brought every subsequent one of these prisoners to his handlers as commanded, either unconscious or crippled for their failed escape attempts, but always alive.

All the while, they used The Chair to reinforce their dominance over him. It was ingeniously twisted, the way they managed to convince him The Chair was a safe place - and the only one he had - so long as he always obeyed. His first experience of the absence of pain, since his capture, was in that chair... after first obeying the command to say the words.

Obey, and be allowed sanctuary there... disobey and it became the place of torture.

The rest of the space they gradually allowed him access to - his own room, permission to wander the first compound, the missions to travel between the nearby compounds - they were all deliberately made uncomfortable. He hadn't known it at the time, but the input of a constant, faintly unpleasant noise and smell, all lights slightly too-bright, and always feeling either just a little bit too hot or too cold, was generated by a chip in the metal arm, and programmed to cease only when connected to The Chair.

This gradually conditioned him to not only obey to avoid torture, but to seek out the very place such torture would occur, as his only escape from lesser discomforts. No one _ told _ him to return to The Chair, they made him figure it out for himself.

Then they carried that conditioning over to the cryo-chamber.

His first real mission was a very simple assassination. He didn't have to travel far, but it did require thought and planning to complete, and his motivations were the combination of the threat of recapture and torture, the warning that if he didn't do it in a timely manner then someone else would, with far more collateral damage... and the prospect of returning to the cryo-chamber when it was over.

By the time he pulled the trigger, the background noise had become almost maddening, and he _ needed _ to be free of it. The thought of The Chair sounded almost like heaven.

But then, he realised, with a dawning sense of shock and horror, what he had actually done. The target wasn't another soldier out to kill him, it was some rich guy in a hotel room, minding his own business, until... now dead, because of him.

That was wrong... and it would be so easy to run.

So he ran.

But they recaptured him quickly, and tortured him for the disobedience. After that, whenever they sent him out on a mission, he returned to them on his own, and was rewarded with the absence of pain or discomfort during the mission debriefings, and then the icy sleep of the cryo-chamber. Painless oblivion. He hadn't wanted it, but he wanted the pain less.

It was fairly easy for Loki to reconnect the older memories that had been repressed, and remove the crude attempt at subliminal command prompts HYDRA had inflicted upon him. And that arm would have to go.

The rest was his own doing, and thus would have to heal for itself, but it seemed almost as though for the most part he hadn't been broken at all... he had allowed himself to bend.

He had resisted at first, but then...

It was so similar to Loki's own experiences; choosing to submit, to appear broken, even to himself. All the easier to turn their works against them in the end. In the other timeline, the Winter Soldier had eventually escaped HYDRA because they let their guard down; because they didn't 'wipe' him often enough, because he chose not to remember, allowing his brain to heal and protecting himself from further physical damage.

The dissociation in his mind wasn't nearly as severe as the HYDRA files made it out to be: they seemed of the opinion that they had inflicted a form of dissociative identity disorder upon him, then fully quashed and oppressed, if not outright destroyed, the original self. They referred to the 'Asset' and the 'Prisoner' as two separate personalities within the one body, describing the 'Asset' as their obedient attack dog, and attributing all the disobedience and trouble they had controlling him to the 'Prisoner' resurfacing.

This was not the case.

He hadn't totally disconnected his own self from his actions, but rather emotionally distanced himself from the pain and revulsion at what they made him do. If he didn't do it, they would, with more collateral damage, and more pain for him.

One example Loki specifically took note of was the assassination of the Starks.

Kill Howard out on the road in the middle of nowhere ('no witnesses'), or another agent would bomb the man's home during a busy social gathering. By the time this mission happened, he had long repressed the memories that would allow him to recognise Howard Stark as a friend... but that didn't stop him from objectively recognising what would have resulted from his refusal.

He had, for decades (though he was only awake for perhaps five years of it), killed whoever they told him to... but knowing these alternatives always made him far more efficient about it. There was always a worse option than compliance, even discounting the torture... and he couldn't discount the torture.

He felt he had no choice, and so was only doing what he had to do to survive.

He seemed fully aware of this.

They had convinced him there was no escape. They had been thorough in this. The only thing that could possibly free him was that metaphorical life preserver on a long sunken ship.

Steve Rogers.

\---

Steve hadn't left Bucky's side since they had brought him back to New York.

At Gina's advice, they weren't revealing his presence to SHIELD or HYDRA. HYDRA had been told that their Captain needed to send the Asset on an extended undercover mission, but nothing more than that.

Instead they had kept him at Gina's apartment, in the smaller second bedroom.

Finally, Bucky stirred, groaning and raising his hand to cover his eyes from the daylight streaming in the window.

"Hey, Buck," Steve said, immediately taking his hand. "It's me, Steve. You're safe. Everything's going to be okay."

"Steve?" there was confusion in Bucky's tone, as if he didn't entirely recognise the name, but did recognise that he should. Slowly he blinked and turned to look at Steve. "I- what happened?"

"What do you remember?" Steve asked.

Bucky hesitated, gaze drifting off to the side as he clearly needed to think about it. Eventually, he looked back to Steve. "Falling."

Steve felt a lump in his throat, and tried his best to hide how that one word had affected him so.

Slowly, Bucky pulled himself into a sitting position, momentarily distracted by the absence of his left arm. Gina had insisted he not have the mechanical prosthetic attached when he woke, though Steve still didn't know why.

Gina chose this moment to enter the room, and Bucky twitched, body shifting defensively on instinct. He was afraid of her, Steve realised to his astonishment. 

"This should help you recover," she said, offering up a glass mug of steaming tea. It didn't smell like normal tea, though it had the same golden colour. It was probably one of the herbal varieties.

Bucky stared at her, "You- how did you-?" he began, still apparently terrified.

"I have a little experience with brainwashing techniques," she said, her tone gentle and sincere in a way that caught Steve a little off-guard. He had come to expect a number of things from Gina over the last month that he had known her: casual ruthlessness, breathtaking audacity, detached boredom, and dark amusement... but sincere concern and compassion were not among them. "I used a trick to make you sleep, and while you were under, I worked to undo the damage HYDRA did to your mind. It's all about subliminal data input."

Bucky blinked slowly, then nodded, relaxing a little - but only a little. "I- thank you, I guess," he said. He still sounded shaken, but no longer exactly afraid. Wary, yes, but not afraid.

"Here, drink this. It'll help," she offered the tea again.

Steve helped Bucky move to sit on the edge of the bed, and kept a careful eye on him as he took the mug in his one remaining hand, and took a cautious sip.

"Slowly," she said, with a nod, and when both men shot her enquiring looks, she elaborated. "It’s meant to be taken slowly. That's why it's served hot, so you don't gulp it down and ruin the effect."

Bucky responded with something that looked like a smile, or at least an attempt at one, and took another sip.

Steve gently placing a hand on his oldest friend's shoulder, smiling up at his newest friend, who had helped make this possible - he consciously chose to ignore the way her eyes slid to the side, the clear tell that she didn't feel comfortable with the trust he chose to show her in his gaze, it no longer mattered to him who she really was, only what she had done here - and with tears in his eyes, he mouthed two words.

‘Thank you.’

Because Bucky was home.

\---


	3. Cripples, Bastards, and Broken Things

\---

After a confusing first day, Bucky's memories began to return. He had known from the moment he had woken that first day that he _ should _ recognise Steve, and that he was definitely someone to trust. Now he remembered why.

They had been best friends since they were children, and now Steve had rescued him from HYDRA for a second time.

However, he still didn't recognise the woman, who Steve had called Gina. Part of him felt like she was _ incredibly _ dangerous, despite the fact that so far, she hadn’t actually done anything actively threatening. Needless to say, he found this a bit puzzling - though, to be fair, his mind as a whole was a bit puzzling, so it didn't stand out all that much.

He vaguely remembered her bringing him food, and a strange berry-flavoured tea, the previous day, but now he was alone and hungry.

He took a moment to check himself. He was dressed in a plain t-shirt and sweatpants - comfort and modesty with no consideration for style. His left arm was absent, his shoulder bandaged neatly in soft gauze, in a way which carefully - clearly deliberately - concealed the mangled half-metal-half-flesh nightmare where the artificial arm could be attached to his body. He vaguely remembered HYDRA never caring for such details, and that incongruity added to a growing feeling of confidence. He was still wary, but the odds of his rescue being a HYDRA trick certainly seemed low. Or at the very least, if it was, they were trying to lead him carefully, which meant that if it really was a trick, he had plenty of time to feel things out.

He couldn't see the arm anywhere in the room, either. He wondered what had happened to it, but decided that really wasn't important right now. It wouldn't be that difficult to function without it. Indeed, it wasn’t the first time he’d had to. While he had adapted to the metal arm - three times as heavy as the original - HYDRA had made very sure that he could adapt to not having it either, both with it not present at all, and as a dead weight.

He certainly felt well enough, physically. It wasn't as though he had been sick; only his mind had been affected by the things HYDRA had done to him. They _ had _wanted him in peak physical condition, after all. Standing up and leaving the bed didn't cause any additional discomfort, as leaving The Chair when he had been with HYDRA always did. This surprised him at first, but he quickly added it to the growing list of reasons to believe the rescue was sincere. That he was safe here. After that, it was simply a matter of regaining his centre of balance, before starting to explore this new location, cataloguing details and calculating angles as a matter of course.

A short corridor led from the room he had woken in, past one closed door, into a small living space, with a kitchenette and sitting area. Two more closed doors led out of this room; one looked like it was the exit, if this was an ordinary apartment. The large window showed an impressive view of the city, and it took him longer than he would ever admit to figure out that it was New York.

He hadn't been back here since the War, not even on one of HYDRA's missions.

The feeling of nostalgia was tainted by the strange shiny buildings amidst the more familiar landmarks, and upon a second much closer look, he also noticed a great deal of structural damage to some of the nearby buildings.

It looked like a war had happened here - he'd seen and caused enough to recognise what it looked like. Vietnam, Somalia, Afghanistan (twice), Yugoslavia, Iraq… and, of course, _ the _War. That said, the type of damage he could see was not as he would have expected. There were no bullet scars in the walls - whatever had done the damage had blasted and burned more often than not, and had tended to destroy on contact, chewing chunks out of the buildings. More than the expected amount of glass had survived, adding credence to the 'no bullets' theory, except in some parallel lines well above street level for some reason. Equally puzzling were the scorch marks on the top of the large building whose name escaped him... oh yes, the Chrysler building. But at the same time, it also seemed like whatever caused this damage was over, and that the city was beginning to rebuild. A construction site across the street demonstrated that, and the street below was crowded and busy.

These signs of recovery were a relief. He’d seen enough cities that had been bombed out, turned into battlefields, or both, some practically flattened, with the surviving former residents picking their way through the rubble, searching for lost possessions or scavenging for supplies. During the War, those had been positively heartbreaking. One thing he remembered quite clearly was a Commandos tradition of getting stinking drunk after seeing such things. While Steve couldn’t actually get drunk by that point, he was quietly maudlin enough for the lot of them. The Winter Soldier, of course, had not cared - not been able to care - only really taking note if the scavengers looked like they might be more than just scavengers.

If that had happened to New York, their home... that was a possibility that sent shivers down his spine.

"Welcome back to the land of the living."

He turned around to see Gina standing in the kitchenette. She barely glanced at him before going about the work of brewing tea. It smelled like the same thing she had given him before.

When he didn't speak for almost a minute, she did instead. "Steve will be here soon. I've had no practice cooking, and he's had plenty burning cereal, so he's going to pick up breakfast on his way over."

He found himself smiling faintly at the remark on Steve's cooking. He remembered that... 'burning cereal' might be a bit of an exaggeration. Just a little bit, mind you.

Meanwhile, she made just one mug of that berry tea, and offered it to him.

"What's this?" he asked, warily accepting it.

"It's a rare herb," she answered calmly. "Promotes healing of the mind. You should try to take it twice a day."

"Who are you?" he asked. He knew her name, but names were like clothes; they could be changed in the blink of an eye, and were often chosen to suit the circumstances. It most certainly didn’t tell him why she was helping him, risking the wrath of HYDRA to do so.

The way she looked at him for asking, though. It felt like she was looking right through him, and she didn't answer right away. After a few seconds, she shrugged slightly, and said, "That's complicated."

He frowned, realising that would usually mean he wouldn't like an honest answer. "You're not HYDRA."

She smiled wryly, and said, "I should think not. Even if it is sometimes convenient to let them believe otherwise."

Bucky did not find this comment particularly reassuring, but also suspected that it was about as straight an answer as he was going to get on that particular subject.

"What did you do to me?" he asked instead. He knew that whatever she had done when he had first woken in the HYDRA facility had been _ very _ painful, but couldn't recall anything more than that. Considering that he knew that, before she'd done it, he'd had very few pre-HYDRA memories, it had almost certainly helped him, but he didn't have the faintest clue about _ how _she’d done it. HYDRA, he remembered with a wince and an unpleasant sensory echo, had just fried his brain every time they wanted to wipe his memory. Restoring it, he suspected, was a whole different matter - and likely a much more complicated one.

To his mild surprise, she actually looked him in the eye for the first time that morning, and the sardonic amusement of earlier was gone, replaced by apparently genuine empathy. Whoever she was, Bucky strongly suspected that she had some personal experience with the sort of thing that had happened to him. That, or she was one hell of an actress and understood the feeling well enough to play the part.

"When I saw what HYDRA had done to your mind, I had two choices," she explained gently. "Either allow the natural form of healing; a long, slow recovery process, with possibly years of pain and confusion... or a clean break." She looked away, as if somehow uncomfortable with whatever she had done to free him. "I know it must have hurt a great deal, but it was quicker this way. You should be back to approximately whatever passed for normal for you, before HYDRA got their hands on you, in about a week. I say approximately because the simple fact is that your time in HYDRA’s hands has changed you."

That drew more than just a flinch from him, and she very definitely noticed, as it drew an almost hasty clarification.

"Not for the worse," she said. "At least, not as a person. However, our experiences shape who we are."

"And those memories have changed me," Bucky said, voice rougher than he'd expected.

"Yes," Gina said frankly. "Every memory we gain changes us." Her mouth twitched into a wry, lop-sided smile. "Sometimes quite dramatically." She focused on him again, sobering. "As a result, it is impossible to remove emotional trauma without also removing the memories that caused it. I could do that if you ask me to, but I strongly recommend against it. It would give you immediate peace, but it would also leave a gap, a hole in your mind, one that you would have trouble coming to terms with. Consider what I have done for you as the difference between snapping a broken bone back into place so it sets cleanly, or leaving it be and allowing it to heal where it is; never quite right again. There will always be evidence of the original damage, but this way was, well... neater."

Bucky wasn't quite sure what to make of this explanation. Yes, he was very grateful she had chosen to do that, but _ how _ could she have achieved it? It sounded less like 'understanding brainwashing techniques' and more like the sort of straight-up science-fiction grade telepathy that he'd read about in the cheap novels that he and Steve had used to like reading before the War. The interest hadn’t really survived their respective entrances into the War itself: his life had been far too busy and short of personal effects to keep up a habit of reading dime store novels, while Steve’s had outright _ become _ science-fiction. As had his, to an extent, though he would make an argument for horror, with his first example being _ Frankenstein _.

It was little wonder he had felt so afraid of her when he first woke, after what she did; his instincts realising what his conscious mind hadn’t quite processed. And if she could do that, what else could she do?

And when she met his eyes, he saw something like amusement, but darker. Not bad darker, as such, but directed inwards, a kind of self-mockery. Almost, he thought with a distinct sense of unease, as if she’d been reading his mind. 

That said, regardless of all his other concerns, she had helped him. He'd take the dangerous unknown that showed him kindness over the known value of HYDRA's cruelty any day. He would try to understand the how and the why of it more later, but for now only one thing seemed to need to be said. "Thank you."

She nodded gracefully, in acceptance of this, and idly ordered him to, "Drink up."

The next week passed quite quickly.

Each night, Bucky had nightmares about his old HYDRA missions - ruthless, often brutal murders, where his hands would crush windpipes like empty cans, snap necks with the grinding crack of breaking branches, and slice throats that yawned open like second mouths, dribbling blood. He killed over and over again, with his hands, with knives, with bullets, and with bombs, each time without mercy, no matter the pleas of the victim (if they had time to make them) or their age or gender, no matter even if they weren't, and couldn't be, soldiers. And each night, each and every night, he was unable to stop himself from carrying them out, over and over again, until everything in his mind’s eye was soaked scarlet with blood.

But each night, after awakening with a choking, sobbing scream, he would see Gina sitting on the edge of the bed, one hand on the side of his face in a soothing gesture, a surreal feeling of safety in his mind, and a slightly unsure frown on her face, as if she couldn't quite figure out what to do about the mental-patient she had been charged with.

During the day, Gina didn't usually speak much... unless it was to antagonise Steve. Steve visited them every day, and stayed until Gina drove him off, and if she drove him away before lunch, he tended to return for dinner. She had a way of pushing all the right buttons to infuriate him in seconds, often with hilarious results. Bucky had never known Steve to threaten a woman before, but in the course of less than a week, he had threatened her over two dozen times with petty acts of retribution ranging from 'telling Stark you said that' to 'just because I can't cook, doesn't mean I won't'.

Gina told him, quietly, one evening after Steve had left, that it was good to have a familiar anchor point, like an old friend, when recovering from trauma. Indeed, it was an important part of recovery. At the same time, however, she imagined that he wanted alone time, too, some breathing space in which he could come to terms with his nightmares, who he had been, and who he was now. She had done, in his place, she said.

Generally, he agreed with her sentiment, though he could stand to spend more time with his best friend; Steve could be overbearing, but he could also usually read Bucky well enough to see the signs when he wanted space. What interested him was the clear insinuation that she had experienced something similar to his captivity.

Steve had also asked her about the tea, but she had evaded the question, provoking him to ask with a hint of irritation, "Are you actually capable of giving a straight answer, Gina? To anything?"

"Yes."

"When?"  
  
"Just now, when I said yes."

Bucky had laughed at that, but Steve had just rolled his eyes and complained about spies and their warped sense of humour.

Bucky was feeling almost like himself after only a week. The nightmares still haunted him, but during the day he could almost pretend to himself that the whole Winter Soldier thing had never happened... or at least that it had been someone else and he had only witnessed the atrocities he had been forced to commit.

Gina had indicated that the latter was the better attitude to have. "If you try and bury the memories, then some day they will come back to haunt you... either through your own subconscious punishing you, or by someone turning them into a weapon and using them against you. But if you take them, accept them as part of you, even if they were not committed by you, then they can never be used against you again."

It was a good mantra. If he repeated that to himself for long enough, maybe he’d even start to believe it.

\---

"I've a question for you, Stark." 

Tony always felt a touch uncomfortable whenever Regina Snow looked at him like that, as if she was seeing far more of him than she really should. He didn't imagine x-ray vision, which he wouldn’t mind - he had nothing to be ashamed of, and he'd discarded his sense of modesty at an early age after finding little use for it. Rather, it seemed more like mind-reading. Or worse: fortune-telling. If, you know, fortune-tellers could actually live up to their claims, which to his mind was a far more unsettling prospect than any other he’d recently encountered.

"Yes, Snow?" he retorted, knowing full well her alias was just that, and they both appeared to have at least a passing awareness of _ Game of Thrones _. He only knew the basics that you just couldn't avoid without hiding in a cave in the middle of the desert, and even then his knowledge had mainly focused on the family that had happened to share his name. In his firm opinion, while the looks were right, the personalities were way off.

"Do you think if someone was mind-controlled, they should be punished for their actions?" Snow asked bluntly.

Tony immediately thought of Clint and what he had been through at Loki's hands. "No."

"Good. Keep it in mind," she muttered.

"Why?" he asked with a frown. "Something you want to tell me?"

She smirked. "Not today," she said. He got the feeling they were still on _ Game of Thrones _ here, but he couldn't quite see how that quote fit.

"Have you ever been... y'know..." he gestured to the side of his head as if to imply mind-control, but didn't really want to say the words.

She was prevented from answering - or at least, avoided answering - by the door opening at that moment. But in the privacy of his own head, Tony thought that the way she’d tensed up - for a moment, just one moment - had given him all the answers he needed, or, frankly, wanted.

Rogers, who had been due ten minutes ago, walked in. He was followed by an unfamiliar man doing a poor spy-movie job of trying to look inconspicuous wearing baggy clothes, a baseball cap and sunglasses. Behind them both, Barton and Romanoff quietly filed into the room as well. This group, he felt, was not one that boded well.

"Hey, Cap," Tony said with all due irreverence. "So what'd you want to see me for?"

"We were hoping you could do some prosthetics work," Rogers said. He sounded cautious, wary, under an attempt to sound casual. Since Tony knew for a fact that Rogers was a far better actor than his reputation would have most believe, this set alarm bells ringing.

Whatever was about to happen was something he might not like, and it almost certainly had something to do with Mr Cap and Glasses. It might not be dangerous, intentionally or accidentally - while Rogers might have an attitude to threat assessment that was closely tied to his endearing propensity to assume the best of people, the Spy Twins were not so lax. Moreover, while Natasha probably wouldn’t mind him getting a few bruises, she liked Pepper too much to let anything permanent happen to him.

"We don't trust the previous model," Snow piped up, wearing an almost manic grin.

"_ You _ don't trust it," Rogers corrected her with evident amusement.

"Prosthetics, what do I look like, a paediatrician?" Tony sighed. "Come on then, let me take a look."

The stranger removed his jacket to reveal an entire arm was missing. Tony examined what little was left of the man's arm - barely more than the shoulder-joint, really, and it looked like someone had mutilated even that. The scars showed that _ something _ had been implanted there - JARVIS' advanced sensors telling him that the scarring even extended down to the ribcage - but it had been removed... possibly quite recently, but it was hard to tell without knowing more about the situation; if he was enhanced like Cap, or if someone had used weird space-alieny stuff on him (Thor claimed Asgard had magic healing _ stones _ or _ crystals _, or something), then these scars could be only days old, weeks at the most. If, on the other hand, he was a normal man then it was more likely to be at least several months, if not a couple of years.

It would take surgery to attach a new artificial arm, like Snow was asking him to do, but judging by these scars, he could easily do far better than whatever came before. Yes, he could definitely do a better job, he thought with a frown. Whoever had handled the previous job had either been a sadist, working with primitive equipment, or a hack, or perhaps all three at once. It was an absolute mess.

"Don't believe we've been introduced," he muttered as he worked on these scans. "I'm Tony Stark; billionaire, genius, playboy, philanthropist, part-time inventor, and, apparently, now also a nursemaid."

"You sound like a Stark," the man said, with a hint of amusement.

Tony looked at Snow suspiciously for that one. "Tony, son of Howard," she said simply. "From what I hear of the elder, it's almost cloning."

The stranger chuckled lightly. "Yeah."

"Thanks," Tony muttered sourly. Howard was someone he’d spent a very long time trying to become, enough to make his father proud of him, and then spent even longer trying _ not _to become, out of a mixture of wanting to get out of his shadow, and more recently, a desire to reject the weaponeering legacy that Howard had left him, as well as, frankly, no small measure of spite towards his dead father.

While his views on the dearly departed had been somewhat altered by the message his father had left him, along with the formula for a new element to power his arc reactor, which had ended up saving his life, he still didn’t enjoy the concept of being compared to Howard - who, as it happened, might have loved him and seen him as more than just a necessary but irritating part of securing his legacy, but had never managed to actually gather up the courage and/or emotional energy to push past the cold brusqueness of his basic personality to say it, not to Tony’s face.

Especially, when it came to it, by a random stranger and a compulsively mysterious woman who he barely knew, neither of whom, logic suggested, could possibly have known Howard. "So who, exactly, are you?"

"James Buchanan Barnes," the man answered, causing Tony to do a double take, before leaning back to get a better look at the man's face. Now that he looked, he could see the resemblance.

"You know, when people choose someone to impersonate, they generally don't pick someone who's been dead for nearly seventy years," he said mildly.

"Thanks. I'll remember that next time I'm trying to decide who to impersonate," the supposed Bucky said.

Tony raised an eyebrow. "Well, my initial diagnosis is that you may have lost an arm, but you've retained your sense of humour," he said. "Only one of which I am qualified to replace. If you had lost the latter, the best I could do was tell you to listen to me speak and use it as a guide of what to do."

Snow rolled her eyes. "For the sake of us all, please don't do that," she said.

Tony looked up at her, then Rogers. "So, he's the real thing, then?" he asked.

"He is," Rogers said, with that steady and aching sincerity that would have made the chiefs of staff snap into an instant salute.

"Huh," Tony said, after a moment, before inspecting Bucky again. He looked like the real article, that was for sure, and by implication he'd not only run the gauntlet of shared memories with Rogers, but the suspicions of three spies, if the presence of Barton and Romanoff, plus the casual commentary of Snow, were anything to go by. Tony would have to internally revise his opinion of the comparison to his father. This man, at least, had actually known Howard.

"Well, well, well. The infamous 'Bucky'," Tony said, finishing his examination and turning to pick up a tablet, into which he started typing. "Not sure if I should be happy you're not dead, or more worried about the person who told us about it."

Rogers frowned, but at a slight shrug and eye-roll from Romanoff that they both probably didn't think Tony noticed, he subsided.

With a flick of his wrist, a hologram projected from overhead, moving in a way that gave the illusion that it had emerged from the tablet, taking the form of an illusory skeleton of a mechanical arm next to Barnes. "Hold still, please," Tony ordered, as he began to manipulate the holographic model.

The schematics on the tablet went further into the image of the scans of Barnes' body than could be seen on the hologram, and showed where and how they might be able to connect to his existing nerves, muscles and bones. There was a _ lot _ of nerve damage around the shoulder, as if whatever came before hadn't cared at all if it hurt him. Tony already had a pretty awesome surgeon on staff - mostly for the arc reactor in his chest, and this wasn't _ that _ dissimilar - but he'd probably have to call in a neural specialist, as well. Still not a big deal, especially if this man was really who everyone was saying he was.

Tony often tried to pass it off as just him being grandiose and dramatic, but he actually took a great deal of pleasure in helping people. The closer the person he was helping was to him and the happier they seemed with the results, the more he actively enjoyed it. The reason he pretended that wasn't the point was because of his fear of rejection. Part of him really wanted the Avengers to be his friends (while he didn't totally trust Romanoff, a shared battle or two did wonders to solidify at least mutual respect. Plus, she didn't totally trust him either, which meant it all balanced out… sort of). The simple fact was that they were the people who, besides Pepper and Rhodey, were most likely to be able to understand him. He wasn't sure how they felt about that yet - truth be told, he wasn’t quite sure how _ he _felt about that yet - and he kind of wished his friends would directly tell him what they needed like this more often, instead of letting him guess as horribly wrongly as he usually did (he was still mad at himself about the strawberries). Helping the Captain's old friend out like this was definitely worth his time (and, far less importantly, his money).

He fiddled with the finer details of this design for almost a full minute, before anyone bothered to speak again. "Are we sure he's fully deprogrammed?" Natasha asked Snow, softly.

"Almost certainly," Snow replied, with a vague and dismissive shrug that showed absolutely no concern. "I'd not let him listen to anything in Russian for a while, just to be sure."

Barnes spoke up at that point, and there was a smirk on his face as he said whatever it was, but it was Russian and Tony had no idea what it actually meant - his Russian vocabulary was mostly limited to ‘vodka’ and the odd euphemism. Neither Snow nor Rogers seemed to understand the words, either... but Natasha seemed amused in that way that only barely reached her eyes, and Barton actually snorted with laughter.

Tony paused his work and looked between the two women for a beat. "What do you mean, deprogrammed?" he asked, eyes narrowing.

"It's a long story," Rogers said, sounding more than a little bit defensive.

"Hey, Clint, come and stand near Bucky to help me make a dramatic point, would you?" Snow asked. Barton didn't cooperate, instead shooting a very cold look Snow's way, but it didn't take a genius to do that math.

"Ah, right," Tony said, repeating the gesture to the side of his head, before resuming working. The skeleton image was quickly covered by a series of plates, piecing together the way the Iron Man armour would, but moulded to more closely mimicking the shape of real muscles, to match Barnes' right arm. "Got a preferred colour scheme?" he asked Barnes, and the hologram began cycling through various colours of metallic paint.

Barnes seemed surprised by this question. Apparently nobody had asked him any such thing before. "Uh, no."

At Tony's direction, the hologram settled on black, to match the man's apparent preferred clothing colour. He could have been belligerent, and offered up either his own favourite hot-rod red, or maybe the Captain America signature red-white-and-blue, but he doubted the joke would go down so well. The black paint made it a bit difficult to see the details on the hologram, but that made no difference to the actual data.

"Want any gadgets?" Tony asked. At Barnes' confused expression he elaborated. "It's already double-jointed, and my most durable nano-carbon materials - five hundred times stronger than steel, ten times lighter, and no setting off the metal detectors at the airport - but I can throw in a range of extras. Hidden compartments, bottle opener, phone charger, chainsaw-"

"No thanks," Barnes said, paling significantly at the weaponised option, even though Tony had been joking by that point.

He only just managed to resist the urge to quote, _ 'Shop smart, shop S-Mart.' _

"You never know when a good hiding place could come in handy," Snow said, her tone a touch too casual. "I say take what the man is offering, Bucky."

Barnes gave her a slightly suspicious look for that. The other three were notably more open in said suspicions. Tony just shrugged and added a couple of hiding spots into the design anyway. One near the shoulder, the other in the forearm. Better safe than sorry, and Tony would always know where to scan if Barnes did start acting suspiciously.

"Alright. JARVIS, call our consulting surgeon, collaborate on the connectivity details, and then begin fabrication." The hologram disappeared at those words, JARVIS having long since reached the sophistication - or, arguably, had just got to know him well enough - to understand that now playtime was over. "We can probably have the whole thing sorted by tomorrow afternoon, and I mean you'd be waking up from surgery with a new arm by that time, if you want," he said, setting the tablet down.

Barnes glanced warily at Rogers and Snow, for that. Rogers put his hand on Barnes' undamaged shoulder, in a comforting gesture, and nodded. Barnes cautiously nodded, in response. "Yeah. Thanks," he said, his voice a touch shaky. Tony got the impression, from that hesitation, that he did not have and good past experiences with the medical profession.

"That'll be one million dollars," Tony added, his tone clearly joking, as he held his pinky finger up to the corner of his mouth. Nobody got the joke (except possibly Romanoff, but she had one hell of a poker face), so he shook his head. "Kidding. Kidding, it's on the house. Enjoy."

\---

All Tony had been told about how Barnes was still alive, and looking like he'd just stepped out of the newsreels from the nineteen-forties, was that HYDRA had found him after the infamous train fall. Whatever they had done to him had apparently been something that no one who knew the details was comfortable talking about. However, it didn’t take a genius to realise that it involved reprogramming and some form of medical experimentation - or rather, torture. In fact, torture was probably too dignified a word, going by the scar tissue; butchery seemed more appropriate.

It was a bit awkward, the way Ms Snow went out of her way to reassure Tony that he'd be told everything, once they had actually gathered all the relevant information. It wasn't really Tony's business, was it? Beyond, you know, the assurance that the Six Million Dollar Man wouldn’t go on an unexplained rampage while he was in Tony’s house. Why did she seem to care so much about telling him? He added this to the list of things that, since Barnes' introduction to his life, did not bode well.

Either way, he did _ not _ like the artificial arm that he was being tasked with replacing.

Snow told him bluntly - and frustratingly absent any real explanation - that she trusted him more to create something better from scratch, rather than to renovate the existing evil thing, hence waiting to hand it over to him only after he had already begun fabricating the new one.

And, oh boy, was it evil.

Someone - likely Snow - had already dug out and destroyed a tracking beacon that had been inside the arm, but that was only the start of it.

It weighed a ton. That alone would have made it uncomfortable to wear, nevermind use, and while Tony’s knowledge of human physiology was relatively basic (by his standards, which meant that it was well beyond most junior doctors), it wasn’t at all difficult to see how it had twisted his muscle development to compensate. Tony remembered the scars the scans showed, on Barnes' ribcage and shoulder blade, which when paired with this new information told Tony that some kind of metal structure had been riveted into the bones to provide extra leverage and support for the evil thing. Then there was the way it had been connected to the man himself, which was downright cruel. Wired up to the nervous system in a way that was impressively innovative considering how old this thing was... but still cruel.

And _ then _ there was the feedback loop. It just _ had _ to have been deliberately programmed, there was no other purpose for its existence. It was designed, explicitly, to cause pain and discomfort to the wearer, unless it received a certain signal. Tony presumed this was meant to be some form of control over the wearer; like, if you try to run not only will we find you because of the tracking device, but you'll suffer until we do, as well. The burned hand teaches best.

Right then and there, Tony decided that if, by some chance, he encountered whoever had made this thing, along with whoever had designed it and whoever had ordered it, he was going to take that arm and shove it up their asses, then maybe pull it out the other end. It made him angry, it really did, on a fundamental level. This was science being misused - not out of horribly misguided good intentions, or apathy as his weaponeering had been, but out of a conscious desire to cause suffering. It was beyond fucked up.

Why even give him this thing, in the first place? To make him angry? To make him sympathise with Barnes? It had succeeded at the former, that was for sure... and at the latter, but it hadn’t really needed to. For one thing, he had no reason _ not _to sympathise with him.

Snow watched him examine it, like a hawk, and followed his reactions like reading an open book.

"You knew, didn't you?" he asked her bluntly.

"Why do you think I wanted it replaced?" she replied simply.

"You said it was HYDRA who had him?"

"Long story, and I promise we will tell you, as soon as we've collected all the relevant data."

"Oh, that sounds ominous," Tony grumbled. "I want to destroy this thing. It's evil."

Snow smiled coldly at that. "Good to know you can recognise it some of the time."

\---

The evening after Bucky's surgery, the entire Avengers team - plus Bucky and Gina - had gathered in a small park/large garden owned by Stark's corporate holdings, usually for the purpose of company picnics, small concerts, and one of the outlying venues for the Stark Expo that sprawled across the city whenever it was on. It was in a quiet suburban neighbourhood, away from prying eyes.

Natasha had helped Steve and Bucky set up a small bonfire, and Bucky had then proceeded to throw the old Soviet-HYDRA-designed cybernetic arm onto it. This little bonfire was mostly symbolic, as the fire wouldn't really destroy it. Some of the inner workings did overload in the heat, sparking and popping, but the metal shell was more durable than that. They would dispose of it properly, later, but a good ceremonial burn-the-evil-thing party still helped.

Now Bucky was lost in thought as he watched the flames lick the metal. There was something cathartic about watching this piece of his nightmares burn.

Gina sat next to him, and offered him one of the sandwiches, which Stark had ordered shipped here by some fancy catering company, so they hadn't needed to pack or prepare anything for the impromptu getaway.

He took the offered plate carefully, still adjusting to the new arm he was now using, and smiled at her. "Thanks."

The new arm weighed slightly less than his real arm, now, but he had tested it out earlier and discovered that it was also stronger than the evil HYDRA one. Best of all, it didn't hurt at all, which was a vast improvement in and of itself.

Gina was watching him with what appeared to be open curiosity. "How are you feeling?" she asked.

"Fine."

"No, really."

He chuckled darkly. "I'll be fine... I think."

"I've been there," she said softly. "Someone else weaselling into my head, twisting my thoughts until doing their bidding sounds so much better than my own interests. Using my own mind as a weapon against me."

He looked at her with surprise, but said nothing.

"They don't understand what it feels like," she continued slowly. "I know Barton's been there, too, but I also know he'd not listen if I talked to him about it."

"How come?" Bucky asked with a frown.

"He only experienced it for two days," she said, glancing at the man in question as he laughed and joked with Natasha and Bruce. "And it was quick for him. Clean. One moment himself, the next a puppet, then back again like it was all a bad dream."

"And you...?" Bucky asked slowly.

"It took months to break down my defences," she said softly.

"They tortured you to gain control," he said, with dawning realisation. She nodded slowly. "Yeah, I get that," he said. His time with HYDRA had started that way, too.

"So when I asked how you were feeling, I wanted the truth," she clarified.

"Disconnected," he answered, the first thought to come to his mind. "If it weren't for Steve, I think I'd have lost it by now."

"It must be nice to have someone you trust _ that much _."

"You don't?"

"Trust is a strong word for the few ties I have. I love my mother, but the only help she could offer was accepting the _ fact _ of what was done to me: she can't know how it _ feels _... and I wouldn't want her to. I trust my brother to always do what he thinks is 'right', but not to consider my feelings." She paused, considering for a moment, before frowning pensively. "Not out of any malice, you understand," she said. "He cares for me, and he has become rather better - belatedly - at showing it. But it always comes secondary to doing what he thinks is right." She glanced at Steve. "In many ways, he is a lot like Steve. In others... well. Steve puts you, and your feelings, first. My brother would probably not do the same." She sighed. "Not that I’ve given him much reason to do so, I must admit. As for everyone else..." she gestured at the assembled group. "I'm just an acquaintance, and not even a favoured one at that."

"Steve trusts you."

"No, he doesn't. He needed me to help find you, and now he's grateful, but he doesn't trust me." The certainty with which she said that was slightly jarring. It was more than just _ believing _ Steve felt that way. Yet again he got the feeling she could read people far more easily than she let on.

But Bucky still wasn't sure she was right about it. Steve would surely see her as a friend by now, after what they must have gone through together to rescue him? But he didn't really think arguing would help here. Instead he said, "Well, you're talking to me."

The smile he saw cross her face at that was so fleeting, he'd have missed it if he'd blinked.

He reached out and took her hand. He realised his mistake in using the artificial arm instead of the real one a moment too late, but she didn't flinch at the unnatural touch, as he would have expected. She pretended not to acknowledge it, but the prosthetic was very well-designed. While Tony had made clear early - in expressions and casual comments that weren't half so casual as they appeared - that for whatever reason he didn't appreciate comparisons to Howard, if this arm was anything to go by, he had his father's gift with technology - maybe even more so. Unlike the old one, it wouldn't make him feel pain when it was damaged, but it did let him feel the slight pressure when she gently squeezed his hand in return.

In an instant the hairs on the back of his neck rose and he knew eyes were on him.

He looked up, and saw Thor was watching them with a frown. He didn't know much about the supposed 'God of Thunder', other than the videos Steve had shown him of the Battle of New York and a few comments, also from Steve, that suggested he was a decent guy, if nearly as hot-headed as Dugan at times. So, he was surprised to see a degree of venom in that gaze as it moved to focus on Gina. That was not merely wary mistrust. No, it was an expression that said, 'I am watching you, and if you take one step out of line, I will end you so fast you won't even know you’re dead.'

She slowly turned her head to meet Thor's gaze, and while Bucky couldn't see the look she gave him, Thor continued to glare at her. She then turned back to Bucky, and the smile she wore seemed a disconcerting cross between something real and something quite malevolent. "Would you like to get a drink some time?" she asked him.

Bucky was fully aware of the fact that dating etiquette - like almost everything else - had moved on without him, but her words would have fit perfectly in his own time. The only difference being, it was usually the guy who asked.

He got the feeling she was trying to spite Thor by asking him. He wasn't comfortable with the idea of butting heads with such a powerful being over a girl, one with whom he clearly had history (and most probably none of it good), but she was making a very clear statement about choosing him, so he answered honestly. "Sure. I'd like that."

There was a deathly silence as he suddenly realised everyone was looking at them, and even though it was already evening, the sky darkened further as clouds began to form out of thin air.

In a rage that was only just short of literally 'storming' Thor strode forwards and seized Gina's arm, dragging her to her feet and back several steps. Then, in a brilliant pillar of light from overhead, they were both gone.

"What just happened?" Bucky asked to no one in particular.

\---

Upon exiting the Bifrost in Asgard, Loki resumed his more commonly recognised male form, still glaring daggers at Thor. "What was that for?"

"You were warned that if you threatened to harm anyone on Midgard you would be brought back here," Thor snapped.

"Oh, so you're the only one allowed to play with mortals?" Loki sniped right back. "And just how, exactly, do you think I planned to harm him, hmm?"

"I have witnessed the results of your previous conquests," Thor said coldly. "Besides, if they discover your identity, we will have great enough problems without romantic entanglement as well!"

Loki tilted his head to the side. "I don't see your point. In fact, I believe I'm making a very good case for myself by associating with someone who can _ truly _understand, and if needed explain to the rest of them, what was done to me."

"And what might that have been?"

"I already told you this," Loki said coldly. "You saw what the Sceptre did to Selvig and Barton. It was used on me first. The difference is, I was able to resist, and it took the greater part of a year to break my will."

"Why not explain it to them, then? Why must you always lie to those who would help you if you only asked?" Thor demanded, anger clearly tainting his judgement, if he was expecting Loki to just walk up to his past victims and try to 'explain' it so simply. "And what interest do you have in Barnes?"

"You know, it's Midgard tradition for you to be giving this talk to him, not me," Loki said, now with a hint of wry amusement. Thor merely glared, so Loki chose to at least attempt to answer the question. "Ninety-seven years. That's how long it's been since anyone's ever shown a _ romantic _ interest in me, in any realm. All the maidens want you, all the men want Sif!"

"Ninety-seven? Really?" Thor seemed shocked. "What about that time on Nidavellir, when-"

"I have some standards!" Loki protested immediately. "And I'm not referring to casual dalliances. No, that hasn't been a problem. I mean at least some faint illusion of _ affection _. Everyone adores you, even when they don't want to jump in bed with you."

Thor shrugged, using the dismissive gesture to hide some apparent real discomfort at the turn in the conversation. "I knew you were jealous of me for many things, but not this." A brief hesitation, and he added, "I think I know a girl who may be your type. A friend of Jane's."

"You're a terrible matchmaker, brother," Loki said flatly. "My judgement may have led to countless atrocities and suffering, but in this regard, at least, it is still greater than yours. Remember Svadilfari?"

Thor laughed. "At least you've forgiven me enough to say that name without attempting to maim me!"

Loki allowed a small smile, but didn't really feel it. That had been over six hundred years ago, it should _ not _ still be funny. It wasn't funny at the time, really.

Thor clapped a hand to Loki's shoulder. "Well, so long as you swear this is not some underhanded scheme to break up the Avengers over romantic entanglements, I shall leave the dire threats for Steve to make."

"I'm always scheming," Loki retorted, now genuinely smiling. "But unless there's something Captain America isn't saying about his feelings for his shield-brother, I doubt I can cause harm in this particular way."

"I don't know, Loki," Thor shook his head. "Humans aren't generally as... flexible in their attitudes as you." He shot Loki a serious look. "And Barnes is his brother. He..." He paused. "While I have often not shown it, not as an older brother should, I have truly never wished you to be hurt. It would - it did - break my heart. I may have contributed to your heart being broken before, and I am truly sorry for it. I could say that I never intended for it to happen, or that your skill at dissembly is such that I did not see it, but even still. I should have done more than merely not intend harm, and seen more than was obvious, or that I wanted to see."

"I see," Loki said, after a long pause. That had taken a lot for Thor to say, and he... he appreciated it. Equally, though, it would take a long time to accept, to digest. Now, though, was not the time. "Where are you going with this, brother?"

"Steve's heart has been broken enough regarding his brother," Thor said earnestly. "For my sake - or even Barnes', if not mine - I beg you not to be the cause of it happening again."

Loki nodded slowly, and decided to answer in a manner that Thor might not be entirely comfortable with, but that was both painfully honest, and touched upon one of the Midgardians cultural references he had picked up recently. "I know."

\---

There was a flurry of confusion after Thor had essentially abducted Regina from the park, with the main question (other than 'what the fuck') being 'why?', a question to which there was no answer. In the end, it was unanimously decided that there was nothing they could do about it until Thor brought her back. Whatever that had been about would have to wait until then to be resolved.

Bucky was - for obvious reasons - less than pleased with this perfectly reasonable conclusion. In order to not freak out, he focused on what the others were actually saying.

"I mean, it's kind of an honour, right?" Stark suggested. "Asgard's not for humans, from what I've heard."

"I don't know," Banner said thoughtfully. "Theoretically, the Einstein-Rosen bridge could be used to transport directly to any other point on Earth, almost instantaneously. If they were going to another _ planet _, they'd need to stop in Asgard first, but otherwise... they could be anywhere."

"You think?" Stark asked, perking up at the scientific theories. "I mean, it's a ludicrous amount of energy to expend on such a short range - like using a nuke as a light source, when all you needed was a match - especially since it'd need to be activated offworld, right? I mean, I guess so, though, yeah."

"That was your sixteenth nuke joke since the Incident," Natasha told Stark flatly.

"That you've heard," he responded, with a smile that was more bared teeth than good humour. "Rhodey's got it worse; he's seen Stargate, so we've had some deep - and clearly unwanted on his part - conversations about the parallels there."

Clint shuddered at that, in a way that implied he knew what Tony was talking about and found it exactly as inappropriate as Tony's tone of voice suggested.

"Thor looked angry," Steve pointed out.

"Perhaps he's jealous?" Natasha suggested, a faint smirk flickering on her lips, as she eyed Bucky in a calculating way.

"Yeah, no," Stark said flatly, shaking his head. "I doubt it. Hasn't he got a girl in New Mexico? Or did she move to England? I do read the files occasionally, y'know. Remember how I learned thermonuclear astrophysics in one night? Jane Foster wrote that paper; it mentioned Thor like sixty times. Plus, he was giving her the evils, even before she snuggled up to Bucky Bear. Nah, Snow did something. What'd she do?"

"She's been doing a lot of things," Steve pointed out, sounding more defensive than anything else.

"Mmm, I've noticed," Stark grumbled, distantly thoughtful for a few moments, before shrugging. "Like Brucie said; can't do anything about it until they get back. On with the party!"

Steve glanced at Bucky to make sure he was okay, and when he rolled his eyes dramatically at Stark's behaviour Steve took that as affirmative.

It was still weird to have Steve being protective of him, now. Bad enough back when this super soldier business started and the ladies started ignoring him in favour of Steve, but now Bucky found himself as the weaker one who needed watching, as well.

\---

After the impromptu barbeque party wrapped up - and Thor and Gina still hadn't shown any sign of returning - Steve, Bucky and Stark returned, at Stark's request, to the Tower.

"I've assigned you a room on the thirteenth floor, Barnes," Stark said. "This is one of the few places, basically anywhere, where one of _ us _ fully controls all surveillance. Which makes it the best place for you to stay until we've sorted HYDRA out. Technically, the thirteenth floor doesn't exist - old superstitions and all that - I left the number off the elevator, put one-way glass in the windows, and the stairwells on that floor have one-way hidden doors for emergency escape purposes only... only way in is an ID chip. I took the liberty of including one in your new arm; it's in the palm of your hand, and it absolutely cannot be used for tracking, only for accessing Stark Industries proprietary coded ID readers. Admittedly, I _ can _ know when and where you actually _ use _ it, because the readers are connected to JARVIS... but I most likely won't bother, and I'm the only one with access to those logs, besides."

Bucky frowned thoughtfully at that rambled explanation. One difference between Stark senior and Stark junior - other than the kind of facial hair - was that Tony rambled much more than Howard had. Then again, Howard had been reporting to people with much less patience for rambling than Tony - or at least, unlike his son, he hadn't been in the kind of position where the brass or their SHIELD equivalent had basically had to put up with it. It did seem both reassuring and a bit strange that Stark chose to explain the ID chip in so much detail, as if he understood the value of not wanting to be tracked by the wrong people.

"Anyway," Stark said, as if that word and the deep breath before it were somehow cleansing. "To get to the thirteenth floor, you just wave your hand in front of the ominous red glowing dot I put in the elevator to mess with anyone who's seen _ 2001: A Space Odyssey _. It'll take you to the right level, and your room's the door on the left. Come on, I'll show you." And he now led them both into the elevator.

Steve looked at the round illuminated panel beside the list of numbers on the elevator, and frowned. Yes, it did look ominous, and he wondered what the joke was, but chose not to ask because with Stark's jokes it was often not worth the trouble.

Bucky did as he had been instructed. The doors closed, and the elevator began to rise.

"So you just built a secret floor in your tower because...?" Steve asked.

"Better to have a secret floor and not need it than to need it and not have it," Stark said, as if it was the most obvious reasoning in the world. "I'm not even going to tell you how many basement levels this place has."

Steve glanced at the floor numbers; two basement levels were clearly displayed. He wondered idly what the true number was. "Just in case," he repeated, faintly stunned. "A whole floor, just in case?"

"This isn't the first time I've used it, if that helps," Stark admitted.

"It still comes across as paranoid," Steve protested.

"You're not paranoid when they're really out to get you," Stark retorted.

"We are trying to destroy HYDRA," Bucky agreed. "We're kind of asking for trouble."

"Great. We're all paranoid, now," Steve said with a sigh.

Tony shrugged. "Better paranoid than dead."

The elevator reached the thirteenth floor, and the three of them stepped out. Stark gestured to the right. "Other living quarters, not currently in use," then forward, "Office suite, feel free to use the computers there, they're off the rest of the network, but they've still got Internet. Although, the Internet thinks those computers are in Belgium; I threw darts at a map to pick the decoy location. And don't let Steve near the Internet without Safe Search on." Throughout this speech, Stark's voice maintained the slightly-too-chirpy tone of a salesman listing the selling points of something very expensive. In a way, he was.

"What's the Internet?" Bucky asked.

"Oh, Barnes, I have so much to teach you," Stark said with a slightly malevolent smirk aimed at Steve, who was now frowning. "And on the left here we have your rooms. No cameras, windows look like stone from the outside, total privacy. I've got the same setup in my own private suite, except I admit that one exists."

"Why are you doing this, Tony?" Steve asked.

"You said he was in danger, if HYDRA recognised him," Stark admitted, turning to face them both with perfect seriousness, now. "Do I need a better reason?"

\---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Regarding the material Tony used for Bucky's arm: Tony Stark is a troll, but this time he was trolling in technobabble, so to get the joke you need to read this: <https://www.transmet.com/the-10-strongest-materials-known-to-man/>
> 
> I don't know, or particularly care, if that is physically possible: Tony is a troll, and it was a joke... either mine or his, depending on the laws of physics.


	4. Chaos is a Ladder

\---

In spite of having a place in Stark Tower - or as the general public were apparently beginning to refer to it (to Stark's surprising lack of irritation), Avengers Tower - Bucky chose to visit Gina again, as soon as he was able. Even though she was quite obviously more than she seemed - or perhaps because of it - he couldn't quite help himself from feeling safer in her company.

He tried to tell himself it wasn't because the nightmares had got worse again, since he moved into the Tower. But he knew she had been doing  _ something _ to help with them before. He had no idea what it was, and a small part of him was suspicious. A larger part, however, was inclined to grab onto this relief with both hands.

She let him into the apartment without a word, but there was a frown on her face, as she did so.

"What's wrong?" he asked cautiously.

"You could have been seen," she said. It sounded like a scolding tone, but there was real concern there as well. She reached a hand up to brush his hair out of his face in a surprisingly gentle gesture. "HYDRA think that you're on a mission. In Australia, as a matter of fact. I can't have you spotted wandering about New York; it might tarnish my air of supposed omniscience."

"Wait, what?" he asked, shocked. "You're- you're working with HYDRA?"

"I'm making them think I am," she retorted sharply, and now he remembered her saying something about that, before. He had been a bit more focused on her freeing him from them, rather than the vague hint that she might be running a longer game against them. "It's hard work; much as I hate to admit it, they're frustratingly good at their jobs. Not as good as me, of course, but good enough to be irritating."

Bucky choked back laughter, in spite of what she had just implied. She was  _ infiltrating _ HYDRA? "Why?"

"Why are they good at their jobs?" she asked, pretending to misunderstand him. She shook her head before he could correct her. "How else do you destroy an evil spy organisation? A frontal assault just tells them that you're on to them; in that scenario, they batten down the hatches and go dark, disappearing back into the shadows. You have to let them think you're one of them... then wait for the ironic looks of shock on their faces when you stab them in the back. That's the fun part."

Now, he really couldn't help but laugh. This was both brilliant and terrible, but it was her way with words that really made it seem funny in spite of that. Still, the real horror hit him after only a few seconds. "What if they catch you?"

She snorted derisively. "I'm out of their league."

"Gina," he said, seriousness taking over from the levity of a moment ago. He placed his hands on her shoulders, to emphasise the importance of his next words. "Listen to me, they are monsters. The things they're willing to do-"

"I know," she interrupted him. "I'm fully aware of their capabilities. I'm also aware of my own. I can handle this." For a moment he searched her eyes, and saw nothing but certainty in that. She had absolutely no doubts about this.

"I get the feeling I couldn't talk you out of it if I tried," he said, with a very familiar mingled feeling of admiration, worry, and frustration.

"No, you really couldn't," she answered bluntly, though she was smiling now. Specifically, it was the lopsided almost-smirk that he had seen her wear whenever she won an argument, over the week he had been living here.

He sighed, letting go of her shoulders and taking a half step back. "Then I really hope you're right." He wouldn't wish HYDRA's ill will on his worst enemies, nevermind this woman who had helped him so much.

He hadn't just seen what they did to their enemies. More often than not, he'd been the tool used to deliver that vengeance. Sometimes, after going off-mission for reasons he couldn't quite understand, he had been on the receiving end of some of the less...  _ permanent  _ examples. He could far too easily imagine Gina as one of their victims. Or worse, one of his.

"I got you out, didn't I?" she pointed out.

He really couldn't argue with that logic. He was certain the Winter Soldier had been one of HYDRA's better kept secrets, yet she and Steve had found him and freed him with no problems that he had seen. Of course, he had been unconscious for the greater part of that rescue, so he could have missed something.

After a moment, she spoke again. "Given the fact you didn't know about it until now, I'm guessing you didn't come over here to talk me out of my plans to destroy HYDRA."

He hesitated. "I wanted to see you," he admitted. "I was worried, after you disappeared, the other night."

"You mean when Thor lost his temper?" She laughed, though it was clearly forced. "I promised him - and the other Avengers - that I would focus all my efforts on a particular problem. He thinks you'd be a distraction."

"So he's not... jealous?"

She snorted. "That is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard... and if you ever tell Stark or Barton you so much as thought it, I'll be even more insulted."

"So when you said a 'particular problem'... you mean HYDRA, right?" he asked.

"That's a part of it," she admitted. "But there's a lot more to it. You might want to sit down for this."

"That good, huh?" he asked sarcastically. He sat on the couch all the same, and Gina sat down next to him, turning her body to face him.

"Do you believe in time travel?" she asked, earnestly. The question surprised him.

"What, like H. G. Wells?" he asked dubiously.

"Close enough," she muttered with a shrug that seemed to say 'that's the most inaccurate comparison you could have possibly come up with, but we'll work with it'.

"Well... I've seen enough strange things that I couldn't rule it out," he answered, choosing not to mention that she was one of those strange things. "Why?"

"As I told the Avengers, before we recovered you, I have information from the future," she said, a deadly serious expression on her face. "Well, a version of the future where I wasn't given that information, because obviously by acting on it I'm changing the outcome."

"Wait, I didn't get that last part."

"If you were to go back and change something in the past, you wouldn't affect your own future, you would create an alternate parallel timeline." She didn't exactly sound happy about having to stop and explain it to him, like she was  _ trying _ to be patient about it and not really succeeding. As if it was something that just made perfect sense to her, and why couldn't he get it on the first vaguest explanation as well?

At least this second explanation made enough sense for him to nod. "Okay, I'm with you so far," he said cautiously. He didn't really want her to go too far into the technicalities, if they could be avoided.

"I have eleven years worth of future knowledge, but every least thing I change can have ripple effects that will cause the future we experience to diverge from the one I've seen, at an exponential rate."

This sounded like something Stark would make more sense out of than him, but he got the gist of it. Change one small thing, lots of big things start to fall out of place with it.

"For example," she continued. "When we rescued you, that changed a major event in two years' time which would have involved the Winter Soldier. Hopefully I can change it further: persuade HYDRA not to attempt that assassination in the first place... among other things I hope to change there, but that's not the point."

"Okay..." he said slowly, trying very hard not to think who he might have been sent after in that possible future. He hated nearly everything the Winter Soldier had been made to do, so he doubted it could be anything good. "So what has that to do with Thor?" he asked.

"Some of the future I've seen involves Asgard," Gina explained. "In a year or so, there'll be a major celestial event called the Convergence, and- well, the short version is he expects me to help avert a disaster then - or prove I've been lying all along, no one really buys the whole 'future intel' thing I'm selling, in spite of the fact it's true - and it's annoying him enough that I'm working against HYDRA at the same time. Other distractions..."

She... just admitted she could easily be lying. That was really strange, he thought. Somehow, the fact she drew attention to the possibility of it being a lie made it feel less like one, though. He wasn't entirely sure which was worse: having full knowledge of future disasters and not being believed... or if she were lying, what could she possibly hope to gain from it?

"Am I a distraction?" he asked, faintly amused as he realised what she meant now.

"If you want to be," she said, smirking as she said it.

\---

Steve had gone to see Bucky, and found him absent from his suite in the Tower.

Understanding the workings of the Tower and trying not to panic, he asked JARVIS if he knew where Bucky was.

"He left my sensor range approximately fifty-eight minutes ago, sir, headed north." The AI paused, showing a degree of humanity that sometimes made him wonder if Tony had created something more than just a computer program. "I understand Ms Snow's apartment is in that direction."

Steve really wasn't sure what to make of that woman.

She had been painfully direct and up-front about the fact she couldn't be trusted. Yet so far, she hadn't actually  _ done _ anything to prove it. She had helped find his best friend, still alive in spite of all the odds. More than that, she had helped Bucky through a recovery that by all accounts had been harrowing at best.

He wasn't exactly surprised Bucky would be drawn to her. He knew his friend well enough, but still wasn't quite sure if it was Bucky's usual attraction to the 'bad girls', or some sort of Florence Nightingale effect. Or, even, some strange combination of the two. Either way, he had seen the way Bucky looked at her.

In spite of the other Avengers' nonchalance - and the fact no one could really argue with the Bifrost - he had been just as disturbed by Thor's reaction to her asking Bucky out as Bucky had been. It wasn't exactly unusual for Thor to do something rash and dramatic - their first meeting had been proof enough of that - but just dragging one of his allies off to another planet? There was something else going on there.

The next morning, Gina had told the other Avengers that it was just a 'temper tantrum', and Thor was just worried that 'distractions' could affect how she deals with serious threats to both their worlds, but somehow it felt like a hollow excuse. Thor might have a temper, but he usually didn't react like that without good reason. A reason that he hadn't been minded to share.

As a result, and in spite of everything she had done, he still didn't really trust her. He wanted to, but he didn't - he couldn't, not with Bucky on the line.

When he arrived at the apartment, Gina answered. All smiles and innocence, she cheerfully asked, "You brought lunch?"

He had not, but he did suppose he could see why she might think so. Over that first week they had been helping Bucky recover, he had been the one to bring them food from assorted local takeaways. She was acting as if they had simply never stopped that pattern, though it had been a few days now since Bucky had moved into the Tower.

"Sorry, no," he admitted, as she closed the door behind him.

She shrugged. "I guess I should learn to cook one of these decades," she muttered.

Bucky's laughter could be heard from inside the apartment, and Gina stepped out of the way to allow Steve in. "If he hasn't, by now, I wouldn't blame you either," Bucky said, grinning unrepentantly.

Steve rolled his eyes. "You're no better," he pointed out.

"The fact that I once succeeded in weaponising bread does not mean I do it regularly," Bucky retorted. "Or pyrotechnically."

Steve shook his head, dismissing the argument before Gina figured out how to turn it against him. Yes, he burnt most of what he tried to cook. It was why he was rapidly becoming so fond of the modern convenience of microwaves: it was  _ much _ harder to mess up a 'ready meal' than a normal one. Still possible, though, as one unfortunate incident involving an exploding lasagne and Tony laughing hard enough to cry proved.

Gina had been smiling at this entire exchange, in a strange way that looked both sincere and slightly confused. It was most as though she didn't seem to understand  _ why _ she was amused at their bickering.

"So, I've been telling Bucky about HYDRA," Gina told him, causing him to startle slightly, and turn to stare at her in surprise. "I kind of needed to explain why he can't be seen looking like himself in public," she admitted.

"Right," Steve said, still uncomfortable with the whole situation.

"I'm still missing something big, aren't I?" Bucky asked, observant as ever when Steve didn't want him to be.

Gina shrugged, feigning innocence poorly, in a manner that seemed quite deliberately dismissive. "We've got one very big thing going for us, in this whole HYDRA thing," she admitted. "They think Steve's one of them."

Bucky spluttered, clearly horrified yet still finding it hilarious at the same time. "How on Earth did you make them think that?!"

"It's... hard to explain," Steve admitted.

"I've had 'time travel is real', this morning. I think I can handle it," Bucky said flatly, though he was still smirking at the big joke he saw in HYDRA being dumb enough to think that Steve could possibly be one of them.

Steve gave Gina a sideways look for that. So she'd told him about the future? How much, he wondered. But then he sighed, and began to explain what had happened after the Battle of New York.

"So..." Bucky said slowly, having taken in all of that new information with surprising calm. "There's someone who looks like you running around, who knew enough of the who's who of HYDRA to get them to hand over valuable alien technology without question... who knew about me... and then over here-" he gestured to Gina, "-there's some great big time travel plot... and you don't think maybe they're related?"

Steve was stunned by this suggestion. No, he had not considered the possibility. The doppelganger had been far too different from him, where it really counted, for the idea to even have crossed his mind.

"It's... unlikely," he said, not wanting to elaborate on exactly why.

He hadn't told Bucky  _ every _ detail of that day. The double's fighting style was so off... but it could probably be explained by spending years training with someone like Natasha: you pick up a lot from those you fight alongside, after all. But there were other things that he simply could not reconcile in his mind. The swearing, for one thing... and there was no way he had the ego or narcissism to have made that comment after he had been knocked out.

"Besides," he said sharply, "Gina knows the truth, even if she won't tell us, right?" he asked her.

Gina shrugged. "Even if I wanted to tell you everything... knowing the future changes it. I mean, really... think about it. The mere act of thinking about something changes how you react. The knowledge of what might happen changes it. It's not just every action, it's every thought, every feeling. And the reactions are entirely unpredictable. And there are several billion people on this world alone, nevermind the rest of the universe, and they all cross each other's paths, and every interaction is another variable. It's easy to tell myself I just need to do this short list of things and we'll be fine, but that's not how it really works. I have to take every single thread of fate into account, or one of them could trip me up and ruin everything."

Both Steve and Bucky were staring at her in shock now. The worst part was that it made sense... and he had no idea how she could possibly hope to keep up with it.

"This is why I don't just tell you everything," Gina admitted. "I only know  _ one _ possible future. If we step too far away from that, we won't see what's coming next."

"Yet you rescued me, even though you said I was supposed to be sent to assassinate someone in two years' time," Bucky said, weakly. Steve hadn't known about that, but he guessed it made sense. If it weren't for the doppelganger, he'd never have found out about Bucky, and then how much longer would he have been trapped as the Winter Soldier?

"True," Gina nodded. "I could have left you there. It might even have been a better plan in the long run. However, the odds are your presence now will help more than your absence then will hinder." She hesitated. "And... it wasn't entirely a calculated decision; I didn't like the thought of leaving you there, but I did consider all my options."

"You considered leaving him there?" Steve asked, shocked.

"I spent some time considering when would be the best time to rescue him," she admitted, with a nod. "I didn't have all the information: I don't know if he would have been sent on any other missions between now and the one I knew about in two years. What if that changed something, something important? What I  _ don't _ know about the future is far more dangerous to my calculations than what I  _ do _ . I also considered the fact it would have been more difficult to capture him while he was awake and on a mission, as opposed to just finding him in the cryo-freeze. In the end, the deciding factor was that I didn't want him to suffer further, if it could be avoided."

"And there's something else you're not saying," Bucky said bluntly. He had always been good at spotting when Steve was hiding something, and it seemed he was able to do the same for Gina, as she did look away now.

"Yes," she admitted. "In the other timeline, Steve had some trouble adjusting to the modern era. The therapist SHIELD assigned him during his first two weeks in this century was a HYDRA mole, the files he was given on the other Avengers were unflattering, and in the other timeline these - likely deliberate - factors succeeded in convincing him to avoid contact outside SHIELD, until it suited HYDRA's plans to reveal themselves. While I've changed a lot of that, persuading him to trust and work alongside the other Avengers, as well as convincing HYDRA it's not in their interests to have him emotionally compromised, I've also theorised that with you to share the experience of exploring an exciting new future, he'll adapt faster." She smiled at Bucky. "According to my source, you were the one with an enthusiastic interest in technology and the advancement of science. You always made it seem wondrous, where otherwise Steve might see some of it as intimidating."

Steve and Bucky shared a look, surprised at just how thorough her plans seemed, the more she admitted here. And Steve got the uncomfortable feeling that she had barely admitted to half of what had actually gone through her mind on the subject.

"That... does make sense," Steve conceded. He had been having difficulty with some of the changes since the nineteen-forties. Sure, a lot of it was positive, but even then it was jarring compared to what he was used to. To have someone familiar, like Bucky, in the same situation... that could help a lot.

"You said you had eleven years worth of information," Bucky pointed out. This was also new to Steve, but he said nothing about it.

"The worst of it is supposed to happen six years from now, but if we act on it too soon, we could bring it forward," she said, frowning. "HYDRA's only one piece of the puzzle, and probably the easiest to solve." And that... was downright terrifying. If defeating HYDRA was the easiest part of her plan, what could they possibly expect beyond that?

"This is all assuming you're telling the truth," Steve pointed out.

Gina nodded. "And you have no proof of that yet," she agreed. "The Convergence is the first solid evidence I can give, but until then..." she simply shrugged, looking almost helpless. It was eerie how very much that emotion really didn't suit her.

"Well, I believe you," Bucky announced, much to Steve's surprise. Of the two of them, Bucky had usually been the less quick to trust. In his surprise, he noticed that Gina looked every bit as surprised as he did, and genuinely touched. Steve knew that he wasn't really an expert when it came to girls (perhaps ironically, that had been Bucky's area of expertise), but it was pretty obvious - whatever attraction Bucky had to Gina definitely went both ways.

\---

After that, Steve suggested they go back to the Tower. It was more secure, and Stark hired people to cook, thus increasing their likelihood of getting something edible without requiring Bucky to wear a disguise or run the gauntlet of the autograph hunters who might just recognise Steve out of costume.

In the lobby they ran into Natasha and Clint. Judging by the way they both clammed up when they saw Steve, Bucky and Gina, they had probably been talking shop.

"Hey, Nat," Gina said brightly. "I don't suppose you could 'borrow' one of those high-tech holo-masks I know perfectly well SHIELD has, for us?"

"Holo-mask?" Steve asked, dubiously.

Natasha frowned. "That's classified - and it's called a Photostatic Veil. Why do you want one?"

"Holo-mask  _ is _ catchier," Clint pointed out. "And they do use holograms, so..." Natasha rolled her eyes at him, but didn't argue.

"We've got a stolen HYDRA asset wandering around New York," Gina said bluntly, waving at Bucky. "Don't want the wrong people recognising him, do we?"

"I really don't like when you keep calling me that," Bucky pointed out.

"I only say it to spite them," Gina observed. "Not you."

"Still..." Bucky muttered.

"Okay, I'll stop," Gina said simply, but then she turned her expectant gaze back to Natasha.

"Yes, alright, I can get one," she admitted. "I could also get you a whole new identity, if you like?"

"No," Steve, Bucky and Gina all said at once. It was Steve who elaborated. "We don't want SHIELD to be able to trace him."

Natasha nodded. "No problem. I'll just requisition a new Veil. Tell them I damaged mine."

"Wouldn't be the first time," Clint said, amused, before changing the subject. "So what are you three up to?"

"Nothing much," Gina said idly. "Looking for food we don't have to cook for ourselves. Tony always has food."

"We've just finished training," Clint admitted. "Wanna catch a movie with us? There's an entire floor of this place dedicated to Tony Stark's home cinema." Natasha was nodding in agreement.

"Sure, why not," Steve said, looking to Bucky, who nodded as well. "I bet we've missed a few good ones."

\---

Loki found she quite enjoyed Earth's idea of multimedia entertainment.

It was certainly far preferable to Asgard's usual leisure activities, which generally consisted of assorted forms of random violence. Sparring, warring, hunting... the only alternatives were reading or crafting, and if your chosen craft was anything other than masonry, carpentry or smithing, you were compared mockingly to either a woman or a Ljosalfar. Either one could be willfully misinterpreted as a compliment, but that didn't change the intent of those who used it as an insult.

There was a reason Loki was so well-read.

There were echoes in her mind from the other timeline. She had no plans to tell anyone else who her informant was, but the sense of deja-vu as she sat two seats over from him, watching a movie - wrangled into it by the same friends, on the same day, in the same location, lining up almost perfectly with the other timeline - was uncanny.

But the movie itself was not as she remembered. Her own presence - and Bucky, who sat between her and Steve - seemed to have influenced Natasha and Clint's choice of viewing material.

These changes were a harsh contrast, and the knowledge - the absolute certainty - that she was altering events in this timeline, gave her a strange and profound sense of power. It also made her extremely uncomfortable, because while it certainly felt like power, it also felt only barely within her control.

The movie was entertaining enough, though she did wonder just how much thought the two spies had put into their choice, and whether it was intended to have any influence upon the other viewers, or merely be a pleasant distraction. The fact it had changed from that of the original timeline lent credence to the theory that the pair knew exactly what they were doing.

In the original timeline, they had chosen a tale of a treasure hunter fighting Nazis, to prevent a powerful magical artefact from being misused. Now, instead, they watched a story about a time travelling teenager trying to save his parents' marriage.

Literally none of the temporal mechanics seemed to be accurate at all, but that didn't dampen anyone's enjoyment of it. Somehow, Clint's questions about how time travel  _ really _ worked, and Loki's evasive non-answers, managed to add to the air of good humour. Although, the part where the protagonist met his own mother made Loki wonder if Natasha and Clint were trying to imply something about Loki's behaviour towards Bucky... but if they were she pointedly ignored it.

They all agreed to meet up and watch the sequel the following day - another detail that had been true of the original timeline - and Loki left the Tower fairly promptly after that.

As she approached her apartment, however, she knew she was not alone. Weather patterns like that don't happen naturally, Loki had learned that a long time ago.

She found Thor in the kitchenette. It looked like he was trying to figure out how the microwave worked. Loki had seen, through the scrying of Hlidskjalf, when Jane had first taught Thor how to use Midgardian appliances, including a microwave, but this one was of a different make, and perhaps he assumed it served a different purpose?

"What are you doing here?" Loki demanded, closing the door. She then cast an illusion to ensure that no one, besides Thor and Heimdall, could see or hear what happened within the room, before shifting to his male form.

Thor frowned at him. "Heimdall tells me you have been using illusions again, and I see you doing so now."

Loki shrugged. "Nothing harmful."

"Explain yourself," Thor commanded.

Loki sighed, exasperated with his brother's willful ignorance. "If I wanted to hide my actions from Heimdall, I'm certain I could. I am choosing to let him see my illusions, so you know they are harmless."

Thor frowned slightly. "What did you cast just now?"

"Simple concealment from prying eyes," Loki said with a dismissive shrug. "To ensure no one watching this apartment might learn my identity. Nor, for that matter, would they witness what we are speaking of."

"You believe we are being watched?" Thor asked dubiously. "Besides Heimdall, of course."

"Do not underestimate the spies of this world, brother," Loki hissed. "They are very talented, and have a great deal of technology designed especially for their purposes."

Thor shook his head. He clearly didn't believe there was much chance of them being watched. Given Loki's recent overtures towards HYDRA, it would be truly shocking if they weren't. "And earlier this day, what was it you cast?"

"Some of the same," Loki admitted. "I plan to use this one a lot, just so you know... but I promise not to include Heimdall in its effects." He took a deep breath, before meeting Thor's eyes now. "Also, when Captain Rogers asked me to help rescue his old friend, I had to tell a few lies to get him out of there. If the wrong people happened to see him, there could be trouble. He was doing a terrible job of hiding his own identity, so I cast a simple 'don't pay attention' illusion on him, for the minds of all but the Avengers. It will have worn off by now, as I am no longer close enough to maintain it. It was not even close to full concealment: those affected will still acknowledge there was a person there, they just won't remember details. It was just enough to make sure no one else recognised him."

"That... sounds almost noble," Thor muttered, sounding as though he wondered exactly what the catch was; what Loki's real goal there could possibly be. Loki looked away, when he said that. "Loki, tell me," Thor said, his tone trying and failing to sound gentle. "What is it you seek to accomplish here?"

Loki turned back to glare at him bitterly. "I just spent half the morning explaining to Captain Rogers why I can't tell him everything. You know, I'm getting tired of explaining this. Knowing the future changes it. There is much I wish to tell you, to warn you of, but until the time is right, I cannot. You are not well-known to think before you act, the slightest misstep here could destroy all our hopes of survival."

"Is this future you speak of truly so terrible?" Thor asked.

Loki slowly shook his head, haunted by the memories of that other timeline, as he answered. "You have no idea."

\---

Thor hadn't noticed it before. Loki was a great liar, and had been careful, but now he saw it.

There was pain in his eyes when he looked at Thor. In that moment, Thor got the uncomfortable feeling mortals often describe artfully as 'someone walked over my grave'. As if Loki were looking through him, as though he were a ghost.

"Where did you get this future knowledge?" he asked softly. He has no desire to make the question confrontational, no desire to push Loki away, the way he so easily seemed to do.

Loki frowned at the floor, as if it were somehow at fault here. "Memories, willingly shared with me, by someone who's been there."

"And this haunts you." It was not a question.

Loki looked up at him suddenly. "You know what a person looks like when they're broken... when they have truly lost all hope." Again, not a question.

"Yes," he answered, all the same. He wanted to say he had seen it in Loki's eyes, the day he fell... but he knew better than to provoke his brother just now. There had been other examples they both knew of, albeit few and far between.

"In that future, I saw  _ you _ broken."

Thor believed Loki had seen something of great importance. Frigga would not have defended him had he not. But this... it was not what he had expected at all. Worse, it sounded sincere. Loki's emotions were rarely involved in his lies - he preferred simply to hide his feelings. Showing weakness - even if it were false - was not a trick he liked to use. He was certainly capable of it, but Thor could see no reason for it here.

Thor wanted to swear that would never happen... but it felt hollow. Either Loki was lying and there was no point in such an oath, or he was telling the truth and it could indeed happen.

"Whatever threat is out there," he said, carefully choosing his words. "Know that you do not have to face it alone."

Thor watched as Loki's hand slowly moved up to his neck, a strange and unfamiliar gesture that seemed somehow defensive... and then, given what Thor knew of Loki's pride, he said the worst possible thing. "I know I can't."

\---

"Wait, your old war-buddy is  _ what _ ?" Tony demanded in shock. It was less than a week since he had invited Barnes to live in his home, and now he was finding this out? Snow and Rogers really needed to work on their sense of timing.

It was even more unforgivable for Snow, as she claimed to have information from the future, and all.

"The Winter Soldier," Rogers repeated. "I've got the reports from the missions HYDRA sent him on. Gina is worryingly insistent that you see this one."

"Remember our talk about mind-control?" Snow asked again.

"I wish I didn't," he grumbled bitterly.

Snow rolled her eyes. "It's important that you know as soon as we do. You need to understand, and take the time to accept that he never wanted this. It was his handlers giving the orders."

"Wait, do I even want to know?" Tony asked, suddenly very wary of this conversation. "I mean, Nat told me about the Winter Soldier. Legendary assassin, killed someone under her protection one time: that's a major achievement in murder, the way I see it. Why would you be ganging up on me about this? And why is Kyle Reese here telling me it's important I keep my cool?!"

Snow and Rogers shared a look, which made it clear neither one of them knew who Kyle Reese was meant to be. Damn, he needed to get a better audience.

Slowly, almost reluctantly, Rogers handed the file over. "I'm sorry, Tony," he said solemnly.

The first thing he saw when he opened the file was a photograph of his father. One of the old Stark Expo publicity photos, by the looks of it. That was like a slap to the face right there, it really was. He repeated the mantra in his head: ' _ it's the handler's fault, it's the handler's fault _ ', and forced himself to read the report.

It wasn't just a hit, it was a no-witnesses hit and theft.

His mom had been in the car. She hadn't been a target, just a witness.

Handler's fault. Handler's fault.

He skimmed down the page and saw a signature at the bottom. The name of the HYDRA agent who gave the order.

_ His  _ fault.

Tony read and re-read the name several times to be sure he would never forget it.

He would listen to the bastard's advice. Even if it made him sick to his stomach at the thought of so much as looking at the Winter Soldier after this, Barnes wasn't truly to blame. The man had been mind-controlled by evil soviet-HYDRA spies. He'd seen that abomination of an arm, for fuck sake, the guy had been tortured.

Barnes was a victim, too. Just like Barton, before the Battle of New York.

Keep telling himself that, maybe one day he'd believe it.

But Vasily Karpov was going to die by Tony's hand.

\---


	5. Chasing Cats

\---

The regular weekly meetings of the Avengers at Stark Tower were becoming a bit of a running joke among SHIELD. You could set your watch by the Bifrost outside the Tower at 9am every Thursday, before each of these meetings. When and where Thor left Earth again was another matter, but the imprints of the Bifrost in the pavement outside several local food service businesses, which the Avengers tended to frequent for lunch, were fast becoming popular local landmarks and drumming up business for the establishments in question. There were even walking tours.

Thor's mission here was very specific: keep an eye on Loki's behaviour, paying particular attention to how it influenced the Avengers. Odin had commanded that he not seek out Jane during this time, on the grounds that even the slightest deviation in focus could be exploited by Loki if he had ill-intent (or, frankly, if he felt like it), and while that did frustrate Thor, he understood the reasoning and complied with it all the same.

So far, in as much as Thor could discern, Loki's plan seemed to consist purely of researching this HYDRA organisation, with intent to root it out and destroy it. The other Avengers had agreed it was a great evil from Earth's past (recent enough to Thor's reckoning, but only just within living memory to the eldest mortals today), and they had all been openly horrified that it still existed now.

However, on a couple of occasions, Loki let slip that there was a much greater threat beyond HYDRA. This was made apparent through Loki's newly developed habit of comparing the true mission to a game of chess. HYDRA were akin to pawns, in the grander scheme of things, and Loki was playing the long game. Loki told him the trick; watch the whole board, not merely your closest enemy, and always keep your eyes on the enemy King, but would not tell him who that was. Whenever he asked, a darkness came over Loki, who promptly changed the subject. He allowed this, only because he was genuinely worried by the look in Loki's eyes when contemplating it. That look was not malice: it was fear.

When he asked of the Svartalves, Loki compared them to a mere knight, in the game. It made Thor even more uncomfortable that Loki confirmed that there was indeed an enemy Queen on the board as well, though apparently each of these threats were, by Loki's reckoning, unaffiliated with the others.

To think of something that much greater a threat than the Svartalves and the Aether, Thor could scarcely imagine. If it were not for their mother's conviction that Loki's visions were truth, he would scoff at the very idea. Part of him still wanted to; just because Loki  _ saw  _ the truth, does not mean she  _ spoke  _ it.

The strangest thing about Loki's behaviour that he noticed, however, was in her 'relationship' with the mortal man; Bucky Barnes. He only saw them together after the weekly meetings, when the Avengers would feast together before he left for Asgard again, but there was something about the pair.

Loki was renowned for possessing a vicious sense of humour, but somehow Barnes managed to turn it back upon her in a way that made her words feel less cruel. In one such incident, she insulted Tony Stark, calling him a "Foolish ape." Barnes had playfully shoved her shoulder and said, "Hey, I resemble that remark!" In another case, she made the - for Loki offhand - comment that, "Well we could always blow up the planet, that would solve the problem," and his response had been, "It would solve a lot of problems, doesn't mean it's a good idea."

In every case, it seemed she took his words to heart and her ill-chosen remarks were diffused as a harmless joke.

Even oblivious to her identity, he once called her, "Beautiful villain." when her attitude became a touch too caustic. Remarkably, she reacted to it by dropping her original point in favour of preening with pride at his words.

Thor was not entirely sure if Loki was playing with Barnes' affections, or if he was genuinely good for her. At this stage, it seemed it could go either way. Or, knowing Loki, it could be both: it may have started as an idle amusement but for deeper feelings to develop with time.

The real shock to Thor, however, was when the Avengers group arrived at their chosen dining establishment one day, to find Jane Foster waiting for them.

She ran over and hugged him. "I was so worried about you!"

Thor returned the embrace, but was concerned at the same time. "I am sorry, Jane. I was forbidden to see you, and-"

"The way I heard it, you were forbidden from  _ going out of your way _ to see her," Loki pointed out, clearly pleased with her own analysis of the exact wording of Odin's decree.

"You invited her?" he asked. Loki nodded, smiling.

Jane looked at Loki for a moment, then back to Thor. "She told me you were trapped on Asgard after what happened in New Mexico, but I saw the Battle of New York on the television. I- I was wondering why you hadn't tried to contact me."

"Believe me, I wanted to," Thor said, taking her hands now. "After the destruction of the Bifrost, chaos erupted across the realms. It was only with the recovery of the Tesseract that we were able to rebuild it, and since then I have spent the greater part of my waking hours battling to restore order."

"But you've been coming here every week," Tony observed. "Doesn't feel like our little meetings are all that special compared to something like that."

"My father bid me to keep watch on the predictions Regina made, as they concern Asgard's future also."

"Yeah, he's not here for the food at all - that couldn't possibly outrank the safety of the greater universe," Loki laughed. She was already seated at their usual table, with Bucky at her side.

"It's not  _ that _ bad here. The coffee's decent," Bucky said, once again diffusing Loki's cruel joke with a more benign one.

Thor gave Loki a cold look, but then as the other Avengers took their seats, he invited Jane to join them.

This became the beginning of another pattern.

\---

Four months had passed since the Battle of New York.

It seemed no one in SHIELD had expected that the disparate team of superhero misfits, brought together in the heat of battle, would establish this kind of long-term unity, much less a regular routine, on their own. The unity they displayed, even in the mundane, was serving as an inspiration to the residents of the recovering city.

Captain America had insisted on staying in New York, and as well as his duties to SHIELD and his meetings with the Avengers, he also spent a significant amount of his free time personally assisting with the ongoing cleanup effort. The two SHIELD specialists who had joined the superpowered Avengers in the battle also based themselves in the city, car-pooling with Steve Rogers when they attended the meetings. Bruce Banner was known to be living in the Avengers Tower.

Of course, no one else realised exactly what they were doing in these meetings.

"I still don't see why we don't just go after the HYDRA agents we've identified so far," Tony protested, for the ten-dozenth time. It was getting tiresome, and while Loki knew exactly which very specific HYDRA member he wanted a licence to hunt, she also knew it was still a very bad idea.

"Because they're a covert organisation. If they realise they're compromised, they'll change the pattern," she replied coldly; it was far from the first time she'd explained this, by now. She was still working on the list of names. So far she was up to almost five hundred, but she knew there were more out there.

"So what exactly  _ are _ you doing, when you go off to meet HYDRA mooks?" Tony asked coldly.

"I'm evaluating them," she shrugged vaguely. "Almost everyone has weaknesses, pressure points that can be exploited to make them turn back from their cause. If I find those weaknesses, I make a note of it for future use."

"Why?" Natasha asked, frowning.

"If we can convince some of them, especially the footsoldiers who're just there for the medical insurance, to back down or defect, that's fewer real threats in the long run."

"Insurance?" Tony asked sceptically.

"It's been a common issue with some of the rank and file," Loki told him blandly. "SHIELD and other government policies aren't as comprehensive as HYDRA's. The life insurance is surprisingly good for the turnover, too."

There was an uncomfortable silence in the room for a moment.

"Right, I can fix that, I suppose," Tony said, shifting in his seat. "I've got enough government contracts going, may as well get in on HR for SHIELD."

"What, no snippy jokes about HYDRA Breaking Bad?" Clint asked. Only Tony seemed to get that remark, and he just gave Clint a 'I have standards' sort of dubious look. Considering the source, this by itself spoke volumes.

"Would that cover families as well?" Natasha asked.

"Yeah, sure. Why not?" Tony said, a touch too nonchalant, before his tone turned darker and he added, "I can definitely picture someone going full Dark Side if something their idiot bosses did led to their family's suffering."

"Leave Bucky out of this," Steve chided.

"I'm over the Manchurian Candidate. I know who gave the order," Tony retorted coldly, turning to Loki. "That's why I want to know what's the plan for the  _ real _ monsters in HYDRA, and when can we get to it?"

"Once the list of names is complete," Loki answered, smirking, "I've got a very good idea what to do with it."

\---

The Avengers waited for Gina to leave the meeting.

They all had their concerns about her, including the fact that they still didn't know who she really was.

"Alright, what do we have, Nat?" Steve asked, taking charge of this second stage of the meeting.

"All we know for sure is if she was  _ ever _ on record it was well covered up. We can't even find a trace," she answered efficiently. "She just popped up the morning after the Battle of New York, rented an apartment six blocks away, and walked into a meeting with you and Tony. I can't even figure out how she got SHIELD clearance, only that the badge she wore from day one gave her level seven access. It's since been upgraded to level  _ nine _ . The only legitimate way to get where she was on day one is if she was a deep cover agent, assigned a clean slate alias. But level  _ nine _ : there's only six people who outrank that, and two of them are on her HYDRA list. For perspective, Cap, you and I are level six."

"To be fair," Clint put in. "Her promotion came from one of those HYDRA suspects, and was opposed by Fury, who she's certain is clean. It's possible the lies we're telling about Cap's history have won her some 'friends' there."

Nat nodded slowly, before continuing. "The only hint she's dropped about her past is when she told Barnes she had a brother. She also suggested to him that her mother's still around somewhere, if only through use of present tense."

"She mentioned family, in the present tense, to me, too," Steve said, frowning slightly as he recalled the way she described them. "Called them Gryffindors, and yes I do know what that means."

"She joked to me that her father was comparable to Rhaegar Targaryen," Clint put in. "For context: he was royalty."

"Jon Snow's daddy issues, according to rumour," Stark observed.

"She all but confirmed that rumour, too," Clint said coldly. "If I have to suffer the spoilers, so do you."

Stark chuckled at that, before adding, "She implied to me that she had been mind-controlled, in the past."

Steve frowned at that, slightly surprised, though it could help explain why she cared so much about helping Bucky to recover from his ordeal. "Could she be another secret project like the Winter Soldier, by some other agency?" he asked.

"Probably not another freezer bunny, if her mom's still around," Tony put in, with some bitterness showing behind his usual irreverent tone.

"It's possible she's a more recent application of that kind of process," Nat admitted. "But we'd need more to go on to even start looking for that."

"I got a DNA sample off her," Tony pointed out, to everyone's sudden surprise. "Plucked a hair from her head a few weeks ago. She noticed, but just insulted my ancestry for it."

"And?" Bruce asked.

"She's human, but doesn't match anyone on record," Tony said, as if that had been a bit of a surprise to him. "I took the ancestry remark to heart, and tests show she's European. Scandinavian, bit of Ukrainian. By all rights she should be a natural blonde of Targaryen proportions, but other than that..." he shrugged.

"Guess she dyes her hair," Nat muttered.

"Only the boldest spies keep their natural colour when it's that striking," Clint agreed, causing Nat to smirk in amusement at the sideways compliment.

"Do we have any idea what her motives are?" Steve pushed to keep the meeting on track. "Whether or not she's being honest with us?"

"I have asked Heimdall to keep an eye on her," Thor said. "And she hasn't been doing anything untoward, unless you count the HYDRA situation. Which, to be honest, I do. She is meeting with these HYDRA agents, researching SHIELD history, and appears to have adopted a stray cat from her neighbourhood."

"Has she made any attempt at communications outside SHIELD?" Nat asked.

Thor shook his head slowly. "I do not believe so. Perhaps a 'telephone tap' is more your area of expertise?" he said, looking in the general direction of Nat, Clint and Tony.

"If we could figure out who her brother is, we might be able to track down her records," Nat explained.

Thor blinked, but shrugged. "Yes, well. Discerning the personal lives of Midgard spies is not my forte."

"I'll do the wiretap," Clint offered.

"Do we still believe her story?" Steve asked.

"It shows promise that she's thinking about reducing HYDRA's membership with marketing before making the killing blow," Nat pointed out. "I'm not even sure I'd have thought of that one."

"Yeah, great manipulation skills," Clint sniped.

"I meant the reduction in casualties," Nat corrected him. "If you can convert an enemy to your side before wiping out their base, you've gained an ally and saved a life. I've never been given a mission that considered that approach before."

"Me either," Clint observed, sharing an amused smirk with Nat. There was an inside joke there, and Steve had his suspicions about what it was - Loki's comments on the Helicarrier about Nat's 'red ledger' had been telling.

"As to the whole  _ Back to the Future _ thing, it's got some potential holes, but it's not entirely impossible," Tony said, surprising most of the people in the room. "Time travel, if it could work, wouldn't work like in the movies," he explained. "If you went back and changed something in the past, you'd be creating a new, alternate timeline, not affecting your own past. So even if she is telling the truth, and if she does have information from one possible future - which would have diverged from ours when she was given said information, at the latest - their information could already be out of date."

"That's basically what she told me," Steve agreed.

Bruce nodded slowly in agreement. "Yeah. But if it's aliens planning to come down here, their arrival date wouldn't be changed by anything we did here on Earth, so the whole 'Convergence' thing she told Thor about could still happen."

"The Convergence itself is a natural phenomenon," Thor informed them. "It  _ will _ happen in just under a year's time. It can be calculated and predicted by the movements of the stars and interdimensional vortices, and Asgard has known of it for some time. We were planning to hold a feast of celebration on the day, but now instead we prepare for the events she foretold. It is a great threat to Asgard if she is right, and we cannot ignore the possibility."

"That's the thing, isn't it?" Tony said, a note of defeat in his tone. "What she's told us is so potentially catastrophic: we can't take the risk of acting like she's lying until it's too late, either way."

"What did she mean by what she said to you, Tony?" Steve asked. "That you'd seen the real threat? Something about a 'suit of armour around the world'?"

Tony sighed. "Thanks for giving me time to think about that, Cap," he said, his tone a touch too dismissive. It seemed to imply, to Steve's understanding of the normally sarcastic man, that he was probably trying to hide the fact his words were perfectly serious, and he really had needed the time. "I... what I saw when I went through the portal. I still can't fully explain it, just this... unstoppable force. The bit of the army that got through the portal was the least tip of the iceberg, and we're not even close to unsinkable here. And, more than that, they were  _ so organised _ . Whole worlds worth of armies, all lined up and ready to strike -  _ something  _ coordinated all of that. It all just felt so... inevitable."

He sighed sharply, pausing to gather his thoughts, before continuing.

"I guess the 'suit of armour around the world' line is something I'd say; it sure feels like the least first step to what we'd need to defend ourselves from that. Maybe, if she's telling the truth, future-me did say it? Either way, something very big and very bad is interested in Earth, and we've got to be ready. But I don't know what it really is, yet. Something way bigger than us. Something bigger than Chitauri and Norse 'gods'. Something I can't really understand yet because I've no past experience of the  _ level _ it's on, that's why it messed with my head so bad. I'm still trying to figure it out."

"You caught a glimpse of something behind the Chitauri, perhaps?" Thor asked with a frown.

"Yeah!" Tony jumped on it. "Something planned that, and it was bigger than Loki."

Thor pressed the matter. "Are you suggesting Loki may have been used as a pawn by something more terrible?"

Tony shook his head. "That's what it  _ felt  _ like, but that's just it. It's a feeling I got from what I saw out there, and I really was not ready to deal with what I saw. We can't just rely on gut feelings like that, can we?"

"Why not?" Steve asked, and Tony had to do a double-take to realise that he was actually making a joke. A beautifully self-deprecating joke, the sort Tony especially tended to lean into, very likely based on Steve's own tendency to do just that - follow his gut. It was perfectly timed, and shattered the tension Tony had been feeling building at the very thought of what they had to deal with here.

"Hey, speaking of Loki," Clint said, turning to Thor now. "Did you find him?"

"Yes," Thor answered. "I took him back to Asgard to be judged by my father."

"And...?" Clint asked.

"And my mother - one of the greatest and wisest seers in Asgard's history - told us he had been under the influence of something more powerful. Which lends credence to Tony's vision, even if we still cannot be certain what it was. Asgard lost sight of Loki a year before the Battle of New York. We had believed him dead. Whatever was behind the attack must have found him, and..." Thor trailed off, clearly unwilling to contemplate the possibilities.

"Great, another one!" Tony grumbled. "We seem to be collecting former-mind-controlled people, by the look of it!" Clint frowned, glanced at Tony briefly, then sat back in his chair, arms folded, apparently in deep thought. "Hey, you're the least bad, right now, Barton," Tony said in a poor attempt at reassurance. "Even Selvig went more cuckoo than you." Clint just ignored him, now.

"So back to Regina?" Steve prompted.

"Who is also on that super-fun list... and I'm gonna put her right below Loki, because at least we've got your boyfriend's backstory," Tony declared irreverently, before actually deigning to actually answer the question. "Her story lines up with the facts available, but isn't provably true or false at this point."

"And as Thor said, we can't afford to assume she's lying to us," Banner observed.

"So we're agreed?" Steve asked.

"Keep ticking over," Tony answered. "And hope it doesn't blow up in our faces."

The rest of the team nodded in agreement.

\---

"So, the cat?" Thor asked, picking the very small, jet black animal up off the kitchen counter and examining it. Despite his initial suspicions, it was definitely an ordinary Midgard cat... and it was now purring at him.

"Cats are simple, brother," Loki chided, smiling. "You take care of them and avoid angering them, and they love you."

"Humans are the same, Loki," Thor said coolly, setting the cat gently on the back of a nearby chair, where it settled and appeared as if it had been there all day. "You just don't seem to realise that trying to control them angers them."

"Yes, but I can claim to own a cat and it won't complain," Loki sniped right back.

"Because it doesn't understand your words, and it believes it owns you," Thor replied, amused. "You feed it and groom it and provide shelter for it. You're its servant. Perhaps its chamberlain."

Loki snorted. "You shan't make me dislike cats, Brother," he said coolly. Then he paused and regarded the cat carefully. "Besides, if you're right, then I identify with the mindset."

"Please don't turn into a cat, Loki."

Loki laughed. "I could do worse. I  _ have  _ done worse."

"I know," Thor muttered, beginning to idly pet the cat.

"Well if you're done interrogating me for this week, I have a date." In the blink of an eye, Loki changed from his brother to his sister. The casual Midgard attire he had been wearing was replaced by a knee-length dress and stiletto heels, both black with dark green detail. He watched, unsure whether to be amused by her vanity or impressed by her skill, as she pulled her hair up into an elaborate woven style with a wave of her hand - telekinesis, if his knowledge of her talents was still accurate - and applied 'makeup' with an illusion in the same instant. And most would miss it but when she reached for a coat from the rack by the door it flew half an inch into her hand instead of her bothering to reach the minimal extra distance required to pick it up normally.

Thor rolled his eyes. "You should be careful," he warned. "You are close to being discovered."

She turned to him, a look of amused scepticism on her face. "Am I?"

"You told them you have a brother. You named yourself 'snow queen'. Tony Stark performed a test of your genetics, and you chose a human form with Norse heritage. It seems almost as though you  _ want _ them to know."

"The best lies are built upon truth, Brother," Loki informed him simply. "This identity I have crafted for myself is no different." Then, she sighed, shoulders slumping ever so slightly for an instant before she regained her composure. "Besides, it would make things easier if I prove I've been telling the truth, and then they discover my true identity immediately," she admitted, before pulling the coat on over her shoulders.

"I'll just say one more warning," Thor said, his tone gentle now. He was worried for Loki as much as for how his friends would react to learning her identity. "Remember the last man you courted."

"I don't think Sovereign and humans are at all comparable," Loki retorted, smiling faintly with amusement at the memory. "And I only flayed his hand because I wanted to see if they were gold on the inside."

"I still don't see how you thought that was either romantic or acceptable," Thor muttered, before adding aloud. "I meant at your trial, when you took your male form."

"Their vomit is gold," Loki said, flashing a grin that showed too many teeth to be entirely friendly. "And Bucky _liked_ it when we burned his arm."

Thor simply shook his head, realising there was no winning the argument from this angle. "Know that you're being watched. I expect you to behave appropriately."

Loki laughed. "Heimdall's a masochist."

\---

The Avengers still didn't fully trust Regina Snow. They liked her well enough, but that didn't have to mean they trusted her. To be fair, most of them didn't trust Romanoff either, but at least she had Clint to vouch for her.

Even after everything she had done to help them, Steve still trusted her less with his best friend than he did with the spy work... but Bucky had adamantly ignored his very reasonable arguments against dating a spy.

"Do you know how hard it is to meet girls when I'm trying to hide from a semi-evil government agency?" Bucky had argued.

"Five percent and counting, not half," Steve had countered, feeling only slightly tainted at the fact that the HYDRA situation had become so routine now that he could joke about it that way.

"So she's got secrets?" Bucky argued. "So does everyone. A normal woman's secrets can still be scarier."

Steve hadn't argued with that. He wasn't sure he could. His dating experience had been somewhat limited. The day after Stark read up on Steve's history, the phrase 'ninety-year-old virgin' had been said twenty-six times in one meeting. He was actually impressed at Stark's restraint - it could have been so much worse.

Those records were inaccurate, and most likely based on a conversation he'd had with Peggy, right before the serum. He hadn't lied to her, but it wasn't something one generally brought up in such a conversation. Steve didn't bother correcting Stark's assumptions, though. Embarrassing as Stark ragging on him could be, he  _ really _ didn't want to have  _ that _ discussion with him.

But either way, now he was waiting in the lobby of the Tower for Bucky to return from his date. It was only lunch, and their first official 'date' at that (group outings and work meetings didn't count, according to Bucky... and the week he'd been staying at her apartment, to hide from HYDRA, had been before they started dating). The odds were low that he'd bring her back here.

"How did it go?" he asked, as his friend arrived, alone as expected.

"Great," Bucky grinned.

"She didn't do anything... evil?"

"Would you be this worried if I'd dated the Russian spy instead of the European one?" Bucky asked bluntly.

"Yes. I don't know most of Nat's history either," Steve protested. "I suppose I wouldn't have used the word 'evil', but that's mostly the whole HYDRA plot putting me on-edge."

Bucky laughed. "We went to that diner two blocks away. The one Thor avoids, therefore so do the tourists, therefore so do the potential witnesses - and I wore the holo-mask anyway. We ate waffles and talked about childhood misadventures. I told her about the time you and I got lost in Chinatown, and she told me that when she was twelve she apparently convinced half a dozen of her classmates that raccoons are rabbits. Apparently none of them had ever seen either, so she showed them a raccoon and an altered textbook with its image next to the description of a rabbit. She even had them try to feed it carrots. One of them was bitten."

"That is... incredibly childish," Steve muttered. Yet still, it showed a talent for lies and deception from a young age.

"Apparently half of them still believe it," Bucky added.

"Now that's just ridiculous," Steve shook his head.

"Then we had ice-cream and I walked her home," Bucky finished. "That's it. Normal date."

"Okay, fine," Steve conceded. "I'll stop being overprotective. This is the last you'll hear from me about it."

Bucky chuckled. "I should hope so. I'm a grown man, not your kid sister."

\---

A week later, and once again, Steve, Bucky, and Gina were gathered together, this time in Bucky's suite in the Tower.

The suite was huge, taking up just under a third of the entire floor, and was far more than Bucky was really comfortable with having all to himself. There were  _ four _ rooms that could be bedrooms if needed, though only one actually had a bed in it at the moment. At least there was no chance of claustrophobia - he had discovered that if he couldn't reach his arms all the way out to both sides in any given room, he began to feel trapped, reminded of the cryo-chamber HYDRA had used to store him.

It was especially ironic, then, that he seemed to have developed a strong preference for the cold.

Stark and Banner had run tests and read HYDRA's files on him, and discovered that Bucky's metabolism had been altered by the serum he had been given during HYDRA's experiments. Where Erskine's formula had basically remade Steve as a perfect soldier - from scrawny and sickly to the very pinnacle of human health and fitness, instantaneously - the serum Bucky had been given only enhanced the physique he already had. He was faster, stronger, more agile, and he healed better, but that was it. Steve’s enhancements, by contrast, had been so in-depth that even now, Stark and Banner (who were studying him as a comparison) were still making new discoveries - such as the fact that the effects were even cognitive, improving an already decent memory to the point where it was effectively photographic. Stark had compared Steve to a faulty car that had been stripped down to its concept and rebuilt. Bucky, by contrast, was more like one of those indestructible Japanese pick-up trucks that someone had bolted a machine gun and some armour onto, before giving it a tune-up and letting it go. It also had a few other side-effects, including this preference for the cold. It wasn't that he couldn't tolerate the heat, he just felt better at - and Banner said he could better endure extreme - lower temperatures.

As a result, he kept his living quarters only slightly above freezing. Steve had complained about this, but oddly, Gina hadn't.

"I don't like this," Steve said bitterly, as he paced back and forth in the living area of the suite.

Bucky sat on the couch, and Gina stood beside him, watching Steve. Her face was impassive, in a cold sort of way, like she knew how offensive the subject of their conversation was, but couldn't think of any way to make it better.

"I know, but what choice do you have?" Gina asked. "You're going to have to do it sooner or later, or they'll figure out the truth."

"But how can I?" he said, sounding truly upset now.

"It's just another mission," Gina assured him, stepping in his path to stop the pacing, and meeting his gaze. "These men are just soldiers with a job to do, and they see you as their ally. They'll have your back like any other. It's a SHIELD mission, and there's nothing of value to HYDRA in it. They won't turn on you, no innocents will be harmed, nothing dangerous will be stolen. It's routine. Safe and easy for your first time."

Bucky snorted, and Steve gave him a look that was only half resentful. It was more Gina's fault for the insinuation, really, all Bucky had done was notice it and find the particular turn of phrase funny.

"I don't think I can lie like this," Steve said, shaking his head.

Steve had shown Bucky the video of that encounter in the elevator. The tension and threat in the air, before his double had diffused it with those two words. Every member of the STRIKE team was HYDRA, and now Steve was expected to run this mission with them, like there was nothing wrong with that. It was crazy.

"It's easy," Gina assured him.

"For you, maybe," he snapped, before shaking his head. "Sorry. I didn't mean-"

"Yeah, you did," she said with a grin that was both transparent and brittle. "Lying is kind of my thing. Besides, this is why we're here now. To give you the chance to prepare. To practice."

"You're going to make him say it, aren't you?" Bucky asked suddenly.

Gina looked at him, frowning slightly. "That's not a problem, is it?" Bucky looked away. It kind of was, but he wasn't going to stop her. Except, she saw right through his reaction. "Oh..." she said softly. "If you want, we can do this elsewhere?"

He shook his head. "I don't mind," he lied. He would need to deal with it eventually, better to get it over with.

"Wait, what's wrong?" Steve asked.

Gina sighed softly. "This was part of the brainwashing thing. It's not all in the mind: breaking someone's will requires inflicting pain for its own sake, more often than not. One of the early stages is torture... then a simple, usually harmless command. Obey, a moment of reprieve. Disobey, back to the torture." She very clearly spoke from experience.

"And their first command was to say the words," Bucky said quietly, looking at Gina intently. "What was yours?"

Steve seemed startled, as if he hadn't realised, yet, that Gina had been used in a similar way to Bucky. Bucky had never asked her the details before, but she had dropped hints, and he had seen it in the way she reacted to his own recovery.

Gina blinked, and for just a moment her eyes lost focus as she seemed to be lost in the memory. Then she shivered, and looked away. "They brought me food. Told me to beg, if I wanted it," she answered. Bucky couldn't be sure, but that felt like a lie. He shouldn't have asked. It clearly upset her, and if she didn't want to admit the order, it must have been something worse. Still, there was a hard edge to her voice as she said it, which did tell him one truth.

He couldn't help himself from smiling faintly. "Let me guess, you spat in their face?"

She smiled bitterly. "Oh yes." That certainly sounded sincere. Heartfelt, even.

"Me too," he said. It felt good to remember the defiance, in spite of the pain it had led to.

There was a moment of silence, during which Steve stared at both of them in shock. Then finally, he spoke. "I never thought-"

"It's not something I really wanted to talk about," Bucky admitted.

Steve shook his head slowly. "Now I really don't want to say it."

Gina took a breath, and then turned to Steve, facing him directly with a sort of strength in her posture that had been lacking during the discussion of their respective indoctrinations.

"This is how we hurt them," she told Steve firmly. "Every time they believe the lies we tell them, is a fresh knife in their backs. A thousand tiny cuts, to slay the beast. They're a hateful organisation, it's okay to hate them when you say it, they'll not see that as wrong. Say 'to hell with HYDRA'... just pronounce it differently."

Steve was too stunned to see that as funny, but in spite of what had been discussed a moment ago Bucky only barely suppressed the threatening laughter at that last part. Gina's irreverence was inspiring.

Steve glanced briefly at Bucky, who covered his mouth with one hand to hide his smirk. Then Steve closed his eyes and took a deep breath, running his hands through his hair to let out at least a little bit of the stress of the whole situation, before looking back to Gina. His eyes were cold. He was ready.

Gina smiled bitterly. "Hail HYDRA," she said softly.

Steve clenched his jaw, and replied, "Hail HYDRA."

Bucky felt a chill up his spine. Steve's lack of confidence in his ability to lie was clearly misplaced.

\---


	6. Green Eyes, Blue Eyes

\---

Bucky was the type of man who knew he needed to plan ahead to do well in life. His impulsive decisions always got him into trouble (whereas Steve's usually got them out of it again).

When he was freed of the Winter Soldier, he began to read up on the major events and progress that he had missed out on. One tended not to keep up with current events when one was a soulless automaton with a singular purpose to kill.

Stark had taught him to use the Internet, along with a stern warning not to let Steve near it without 'safe search' on. Bucky, being too curious and impulsive for his own good, made the very poor decision to find out  _ why _ that was such a big deal.

A lot had changed, and the most obvious things seemed to be the standard of what was acceptable behaviour. Or at least, he amended, what was acceptable in public. It was, apparently, a good deal worse on the Internet, where it seemed literally, anything goes.

Stark's exact words were; "Someone wanted to invent a future of seamless communication and unlimited access to valuable information... and instead we got an infinite repository for porn and cat videos."

He knew he'd gone too far down that metaphorical rabbit hole when he found a YouTube channel named 'Loki's Cat'. Sure, the animal itself was adorable, and while the video never showed the owner's face they clearly had a quality costume to help sell the joke... but come on. Even if he had still been on Earth, the villain of the Battle of New York was not going to have a cat.

That was just ridiculous.

One other thing Bucky would add to Stark's estimate of the Internet: an endless font of unfiltered personal opinion presented as if it was all indisputable fact. In his first hour he found twelve distinct conspiracy theories that he could personally disprove having been present at the time. Then again, HYDRA  _ was _ a conspiracy, so technically these people were right that something was going on, just wrong with what they thought that was. It wasn't really that surprising: conspiracy theories did tend to crop up around high-profile or unusual deaths, after all.

"Yeah, that's what you get when you Google yourself," Stark had remarked idly. "So many lies... and all the wrong truths."

He should have known better, from that alone, than to 'Google' his real name, too.

It really did  _ not _ help that one of the more popular theories out there was that Steve and Bucky had been secret lovers. As if the wildly inaccurate propaganda pieces that were the radio plays and comic books the government itself had published about Steve weren't bad enough, but at least they knew - everyone back then had known - that Steve had eyes only for Peggy Carter. Even coming back from the dead after nearly seventy years, he had still looked her up.

This clearly did not matter to many of Captain America's 'fans'.

Worse, Stark was there when he found that one, and read over his shoulder. Bucky's laughter probably made it perfectly clear how ludicrous the idea was, but Stark still had the nerve to ask, "I'm guessing that one's not true, right? I mean, if any historically inaccurate insinuations are gonna be made, it's more likely my dad had a thing for him than you."

Bucky froze. He really did not want to talk about Howard Stark.

After a moment of awkward silence, during which Stark must easily have noticed he'd stepped on a sore subject - frankly, Bucky was amazed Stark had been the one to bring it up, as it was likely just as touchy a topic for him, too - Stark quietly said, "I don't blame  _ you _ ." He sounded perfectly serious... which somehow really didn't suit him, and made the whole thing all the more awkward. "I mean, I still want to kill  _ someone _ for what happened, but I got the name of the HYDRA shit who gave the order... so you and me, we're good."

Bucky nodded stiffly, and was relieved when Stark left him alone after that.

\---

Steve wasn't sure how Gina had managed to smooth things over with Secretary Pierce. He had seen the footage of his double telling the HYDRA agents in the elevator that the Secretary had called him, and he knew that had to have been a lie, but somehow Gina had covered for him.

Before the mission, the Secretary personally met with him and the STRIKE team. Everything went smoothly. It was eerie just how  _ normal _ it felt. He hadn't worked closely with STRIKE before, but he was accustomed to soldiers sort of staring in awe when they first met him, and that didn't change here. If he hadn't  _ known _ they were HYDRA - and worse, that they thought he was one of them - he wouldn't have thought anything was out of place at all.

He wondered if the other timeline's version of him had had any clue. Without Gina to warn him, had there been any clues? If there had been, would he even have spotted them?

But now they were in the transport to the mission, and there weren't any non-HYDRA personnel or listening devices to play nice for. Up until now, Steve had had the excuse of the rest of SHIELD not to interact directly with the HYDRA agents.

Up until now, Gina had done all the dirty work for him.

Unfortunately, all good things eventually came to an end.

"Is it true, then?" Rumlow asked.

Gina had talked to him a  _ lot _ about the signs, the 'tells', of a lie. She had told him what his tells were, and how to avoid showing them. He met Rumlow's eyes steadily, resisting the instinct to clench his jaw or look away. "Hail HYDRA."

Rumlow grinned broadly and replied, "Hail HYDRA." Then he chuckled darkly. "You know there was a rumour going around that the elevator thing was a fake out. Someone said Loki did it, someone said it was a Photostatic Veil. I mean, it's just been that pretty little 'personal assistant' of yours, since then. Some of us had started to wonder."

Steve carefully allowed his disapproval, at the tone Rumlow used to refer to Gina, to show... but put that emotion into completely different words. "You really bought that?"

Rumlow shook his head. "It seemed about as unlikely that someone would pretend you were with us as the idea that you really were, what with your history and all... but I'm happy to see it really was you."

Steve nodded, as if approving.

"So how'd you end up on our side?" Rollins asked. "I still don't really get the history here."

Steve rolled his eyes, putting on a look of exasperation, as if to say 'do you have any  _ idea _ how many times I've already explained this?' It was easy enough; Gina really has made him rehearse their story often enough to be sure. Then he dove into the pre-rehearsed speech. "Some guy approached me at the '43 Stark Expo. I doubt I ever knew his real name, but he told me he could get me into the army, so I listened. He told me about Erskine and Schmidt, and coached me on the personality type Erskine was looking for. Erskine was so desperate to find anyone who wouldn't act like a typical thug at boot camp that he helped me pass all the tests and get into the project, just like my contact said he would. No one at Rebirth was HYDRA, but I was still working for someone in New York. Y'see, Schimidt had gotten delusions above his station - the serum and the Tesseract drove him mad; he seriously believed he was turning into a god - and the other heads weren't happy about him trying to seize power alone. My contact was working directly for one of those heads, and my job was to take out the traitor. The plane I took down was aiming for New York first, because Schmidt meant for it to take out my superiors first."

The scary part about this story was how much of it he wasn't actually lying about. Gina had only made up the other head of HYDRA, and the contact they were claiming had recruited Steve. Everything else was true, if slightly twisted. Gina had even seen to it that the exact wording he memorised for this really was totally true, except for those two details. He did believe Schmidt had gone mad, and Steve's superiors had been based in New York; they were just SSR, not HYDRA. Erskine really had been desperate for a good man to take the serum… and from a certain angle he  _ had _ been approached by a man at the Expo who had coached him about Erskine's requirements:  _ Erskine himself _ .

Gina even claimed that some of her recent meetings with high ranking HYDRA agents suggested the idea of other heads - besides Schmidt, even back then - might not be entirely unfounded. She had initially lied; made it up... but now she was wondering if she had instead guessed at a truth. That was kind of disturbing, really.

"See, I told you we weren't all Nazis," one of the guys said to another, almost teasing. It took a lot of effort not to react to that... as if HYDRA were any better.

"So how'd you know all of us were with you?" Rollins asked.

Steve shrugged. "As soon as SHIELD let me out on my own, someone contacted me. Filled me in on what's  _ really _ been going on in the last sixty-eight years. They assigned Agent Snow to me; she told me who I could and couldn't trust... and that's about it so far."

Still technically true; Gina had shown up and told him about HYDRA... then assigned herself to helping him defeat them.

"So what about the Asset?" Rumlow asked. "I mean, we all know who he was, what'd you do with him?"

Steve took a deep breath; they had planned for this obvious question, too... and this time he did have to mostly lie, but Gina had prepared him for the art of using real emotion to cover for it. "Bucky was my best friend since we were kids - he was like a brother to me - but he never knew what I'd done. He only knew HYDRA as Nazis, so I can kind of see why he'd be reluctant to cooperate when Arnim fucking Zola was the one who inducted him into our service. If that man wasn't dead already, I'd-" Steve cut himself off, seething.

His hatred for Zola was certainly real enough, and it took some effort to rein it in. But it was okay to be angry, okay to hate them, Gina had said. He didn't need to hide this particular truth, not really.

The metal of the bench beneath him creaked ominously where he had gripped it, and the rest of the team looked nervous, now. The swearing was out of character for his pristine golden-boy image, but not for the HYDRA agent he wanted these men to believe he was. To be fair, neither image was truly him.

Another deep breath, and he continued telling the carefully constructed lie. "He can't be fixed. I admit, I tried. Thought maybe I could convince him to follow me willingly, like he did before, instead of keeping him brainwashed... but it was too late; he didn't even remember me." He was acutely aware of their attention on him, the edge of unease. That, ironically, was one thing that hadn't changed when dealing with HYDRA Agents - the less obviously fanatical ones. Even the reasons weren’t entirely different, which helped sell the show. And make no mistake, he was deliberately putting on a show; letting his real horror and anger at what had been done to Bucky fuel what he was telling them, to help hide the lies inside that truth. Just like Gina told him to. "It was selfish, and I didn't ask for permission, but what's done is done. Where he is now is classified, all I know is my superior sent him on a mission. Didn't tell me where, and I don't really want to know." He took a deep breath, to steady himself and push the anger away. "There's a bigger picture, and I'm not dumb enough to waste resources just because it hurts."

He didn't look, as one of them sat next to him and cautiously placed a hand on his shoulder. "You're a bigger man than me, Cap," Rumlow said quietly. His tone was clearly meant to be consoling, but it rang hollow and false to Steve's ears. "I dunno if I'd be able to stomach seeing a friend like that. It's why I don't have any."

Steve glanced at him, letting his surprise at that remark show. He didn't want to feel bad for an enemy, but the idea of never having had friends... at least in the moment before he chided himself that this was  _ HYDRA _ , the sincere emotion helped sell his story.

"So you've got a superior outside our chain?" one of the men asked.

"Not exactly," Steve said with a smirk. "Your boss answers to my boss." He was, of course, referring to Secretary Pierce as their boss. His 'boss' may have been just a figment of Gina's imagination, but it was working for them so far. "That's why I was allowed to tell you everything. Better if we're all on the same page, when we're gonna be working this closely together."

Rollins nodded sagely. "Don't need any backstabbings due to misunderstandings."

Steve also nodded. "Best to know exactly who you're backstabbing, in advance; saves a lot of time and effort." The rest of the team all laughed in agreement.

Steve carefully maintained a conspiratorial grin to cover a growing sense of unease, because... what if this cover story was  _ too _ believable, and it got out beyond HYDRA? That was a horrifying thought.

\---

Back when Thor had reacted so dramatically to Gina asking Bucky out on a date, Bucky had decided to research Thor to make sure he wasn't getting himself into something he couldn't live through. He read the SHIELD report, which was brief and somewhat vague. So he read the old Norse myths that had been referenced in Dr Selvig's report.

If even half of those myths were true, Asgardians were  _ crazy _ . But Thor didn't come across as unstable, just arrogant and powerful.

Gina had insisted Thor hadn't harmed her when he'd abducted her. She had later even joked that he was worried  _ she _ would be a bad influence on  _ Bucky _ .

When he had been invited to join the Avengers' weekly meetings, he had watched them interact. Thor constantly quibbled over little things that Gina did, and mostly it came across as distrust in her methods. He also noticed her positively terrified reaction (she's a good spy, she hid it well, but Bucky could still see it) whenever Bruce Banner spoke - it took Bucky another half hour on Google to figure that one out, and this 'Hulk' alter-ego that Banner had was intimidating, to say the least. Her fear, though, wasn't the general 'I'm around someone/something dangerous'; it seemed more personal.

On the bright side, he was getting the hang of modern computers far faster than Steve was.

On their first official date, Bucky pushed Gina for more about her past, by offering up a fair amount of his own. The anecdote about the raccoon was the tamest one, so it had been the one he had relayed to Steve to calm his overprotective friend down.

Not merely on their date, but over the months they had been friends as well, she had spoken of times when she had gotten into full-blown barfights alongside her brother. He came across, in her stories, as a bit of a jerk and a bully, but one who in spite of it all cared for her wellbeing, even if he was bad at showing it. The thing was, she didn't seem to realise that. In one of the stories she told him, her brother basically saved her life, yet she sounded as though she believed he did it just to show off, rather than for her.

She hinted, albeit vaguely, that she and her brother had served in the same military together, though she seemed to have been in a less combat-focused role than him. The idea that she thought her brother  _ didn't _ care about her, after going through even half the things she talked about together, was just bizarre, in Bucky's mind.

While he knew Gina was too busy with the HYDRA hunt to plan a second date yet, he decided to surprise her when she returned home from her first out-of-state mission. She had spent the last week in Washington, because that was the location of one of SHIELD's major strongholds... along with far too many politicians who were probably also HYDRA, as well, because of course they were.

He arrived at her apartment building about five minutes before she was expected to return. He wasn't sure what to look for: he didn't even know what means of transport she was likely to be using. She usually either walked to the Tower, or got a lift with the rest of the team. To say he was surprised to find Thor waiting there already was an understatement. Thor seemed to be in a dour mood, given the way he was pacing, and glowering out at the street. It was bad enough to be affecting the weather, though thankfully none of the clouds rumbling overhead had yet broken out in rain. The Avenger was too preoccupied to notice Bucky, standing about ten feet behind him. Bucky was wearing that holo-mask Natasha had gotten for him - never left the Tower without it - but Thor had seen him wearing that many times before, so would still recognise him if he were to turn around.

Then quite suddenly, and seemingly to thin air, Thor asked aloud, "Heimdall, are you sure she's nearly here?"

Bucky didn't hear a response, but he did recognise that name. In the old legends, Heimdall was the mythical watcher at the gates of Asgard, who could in theory see everything. If that was accurate, then Thor was keeping watch on Gina in a way even SHIELD could only dream of, and Bucky really wanted to know why.

He then heard loud music playing in the distance, and looked off to his left, down the street, to try to find its source. Thor did the same.

It turned out to be a motorcycle speeding down the street. In far too little time, given the state of the traffic in the street, the vehicle had reached them, weaving between cars like an absolute lunatic daredevil. Its rider pulled back on the handlebars just as it reached them, turning the momentum from forward to upwards, the rear wheel stopped on a dime as she pulled into a parking space barely big enough for the bike - had the rider not pulled a wheelie, they would have hit the parked car next to the space.

The rider - at this distance now clearly recognisable as a woman in tight-fitted leather that showed off her figure very well - leaned to her right so that the upward momentum that looked set to flip the bike actually turned it around, so it did a full one-eighty and landed with its front wheel less than a foot away from where Thor now stood.

The engine cut and music stopped at the same instant the wheel hit the ground, and the rider casually removed her helmet to reveal none other than Gina, looking entirely too pleased with herself.

"If you're not careful, people will think you're trying to impress me," Thor joked, a hint of teasing clear in his tone. It was true that quite a large crowd was now watching the scene.

She scoffed in disgust at the very idea. "Not likely! No, I blame Stark. He's been giving me some very bad ideas."

"I will be sure to tell him of this, at a later date," Thor laughed, and again it sounded teasing. "What was that music?"

"I think it's called  _ Immigrant Song _ ," she said, idly throwing the helmet at Thor - he caught it easily without thinking. She stepped off the bike, turning to face him with no fear. "I saw this gorgeous machine for sale, and just had to try to hit you in the face with it." She laughed and then walked right past Thor to stand directly in front of Bucky. "Hello, handsome."

"You know, a friend of mine once used a motorbike to jump a blockade and break the line, during the war, but your stunt was pretty good, too... if only because even he would think twice before trying to taunt Thor."

Gina smiled brightly. "I thought about it six hundred and twelve times," she said, "and every one made me laugh, so I had to do it."

Bucky couldn't help but laugh at that, but Thor drew their attention back to him, with a pointed fake-cough. "You left New York, and you did not tell anyone why?"

Gina rolled her eyes, turning to face Thor, still fearless in a way very few ordinary people could ever hope to be. "Everyone knew where I was going, what's the difference? It's not like I'm under house arrest."

Thor gave her a penetrating look for that.

"Nobody told me not to cross state lines," she repeated coldly. "You can't expect me to follow rules if you make them up as you go along."

"You need to tell the team  _ where _ you are going, and  _ why _ ," Thor repeated coldly.

"I knew you guys had trust issues, but isn't this a bit extreme?" Bucky asked, wary of the crowd watching them.

"It's only me they don't trust. I'm not part of the team, I'm just another threat to assess," she hissed coldly.

"You have been very helpful lately," Thor conceded, an attempt at reassuring her, though it seemed only to anger her. "But I still must ask where you were."

"Yes, let's just go sharing classified information in front of a very public audience. I don't think," she snapped at him, turning and taking Bucky by the arm to lead him into the building. Over her shoulder she added to Thor, "I'll explain everything to the Captain."

\---

Loki glared out the window of the living room of her small apartment. Thor was still pacing outside. She closed the blinds. "Idiot," she hissed bitterly.

"You sure you want to provoke him?" Bucky asked cautiously.

She only now began to realise that she had gone ahead and brought him inside. She'd had a good reason at the time - all those bystanders staring. He was wearing the Photostatic Veil, so there was no risk of him being recognised  _ as the Winter Soldier _ , but that didn't exactly make it safe to be seen with her, given HYDRA's general levels of malevolence.

But now, she wasn't quite sure what to do with him. She could think of many different ways this could go. "I was just having fun."

"Teasing the 'god of thunder'?" Bucky asked dubiously.

"He chose to put himself there," she said, smiling faintly.

Bucky appeared unsure of how to react to that. His expression warred between amusement and shock at her audacity. But then, eventually, he seemed to remember something, and held out a small box to her. "I got something for you."

She looked at it with surprise. A gift? Well, that was a universally accepted tradition during courtship, yet somehow she hadn't expected it. It  _ had _ been a long time since she'd actually  _ dated _ .

She accepted the box and carefully opened it. It was a fine silver bracelet. Nothing fancy, not even very expensive, but quite pretty all the same. She looked at him carefully, trying to evaluate the situation: she wasn't sure how to react. "I like it," she said. It was true, without admitting just how far it was from the most extravagant gift she had ever received. Growing up on Asgard, as royalty no less, will kind of distort your expectations in that regard. Based on what she knew about the era in which Bucky grew up, living on the breadline as he had done, this would be quite a significant gift from his perspective.

On a more personal level, she was happy to see it was silver rather than gold. Everything that was adorned in Asgard was gold; it got tedious after a while.  _ Very  _ tedious. Though Loki's armour featured gold (an ironic contrast to Thor's steely silver), she tended to prefer silver, and only avoided wearing it because she stood out as different enough as it was.

He lifted the bracelet out of the box and carefully put it on her left wrist. She still found herself impressed with the dexterity of his cybernetic hand, especially for Midgard technology. She chose rather wilfully to attribute it to his talent at using it rather than Stark's at creating it.

As he did this, he explained, "I wanted to thank you for helping me recover from... uh-"

"The evil HYDRA experiments?" she said with a smile that managed to dispel the tension of the subject matter.

Loki didn't entirely understand why she was so grateful for the small gift. She hadn't expected it... and that, she suddenly realised, was why it meant something. If she had expected something, she would have criticised anything less than exactly what she wanted - she knew this of herself. This trivial little trinket meant far more than any golden treasures, because it wasn't asked for.

She noticed he was watching her, waiting for a reaction.

She wanted to convey a positive response, but wasn't sure which words to use. She knew people - regardless of species or homeworld - were easily offended if you got it wrong. It took her all of an entire second of serious thought to come up with, "It's lovely."

He smiled, clearly happy with her answer.

And she didn't usually say this with very much sincerity, but she did add, "Thank you." Then after a moment of awkward silence, she said, "You should probably stay for a while, so the crowd that moron downstairs attracted will have time to disperse."

"Yeah. I didn't think-"

"It's okay," she reassured him, "It was his fault, not yours."

In Loki's opinion, it was almost always Thor's fault.

\---

Eventually, HYDRA realised their Soldier wasn't coming back. They had started asking questions, and Gina had already prepared the answers.

She told the Avengers at the latest meeting that she had created the false report the day after Bucky woke up in her apartment, declaring the Winter Soldier killed in action. All she had to do before sending it off to HYDRA was add suitably recent dates to the account.

According to this report, the Winter Soldier had been sent to assassinate an individual, who turned out to be an alien in disguise. The report elaborated on the nature of this fictitious alien, including a detailed autopsy report, and identified its species as 'Skrull'. The report even identified the imaginary Skrull's agenda, saying it was a rogue agent seeking to provoke a militant alien race known as the Kree into attacking Earth, for some reason that descended into intergalactic politics. Bucky had sort of lost focus at that point, skipping to the end, where it went on to say that Captain America had been forced to step in personally to eliminate the Skrull.

Gina also told the Avengers that Skrull and Kree were both very real, and on SHIELD record as both being involved in a minor skirmish on Earth in 1995. Apparently those particular Skrull had been quite nice, so she had added the 'rogue agent' part to disconnect her lie from them a bit.

HYDRA had bought that story easily enough, and not much changed as far as Bucky was concerned.

He mostly helped with Gina's research, having proved to have a natural talent with computers, especially their less legal uses involving encrypted government databases. He had also joined Clint and Natasha, when they held their regular training sessions in the Tower instead of SHIELD's base (which was becoming more frequent, now).

In Steve's limited downtime he would visit and they would watch old movies and reminisce - they had made it their shared mission to spend this personal time catching up on every good movie they had missed during their time on ice, as recommended by JARVIS, who seemed to be very good at picking them.

Although, the first one he recommended was  _ The Terminator _ \- apparently the machine had inherited his creator's sense of humour.

Bucky's relationship with Gina had been based on small moments where she wasn't extremely busy, but those had been innocent enough in themselves. He didn't want to push her, even though she basically told him she considered the few hours they got together between meetings and missions to count as 'dates'. The tacit insinuation being that she'd probably not refuse should he try to move their relationship to the next level.

Somehow, someone always had the poor sense of timing to interrupt them.

But now... "You know, you're the only one who doesn't complain about the cold, in here," he said, as she stepped into his suite in the Tower.

"I like the cold," she answered, smiling at him, but somehow it looked forced. 

He put an arm around her waist to lead her over to the couch, and she leaned into the gesture. It still managed to surprise him, when she showed no reaction to the artificial nature of his left arm.

Once they sat down, she finally admitted what was bothering her. "I killed a man today," she said softly. Bucky was startled by the bluntness, but he didn't interrupt as she explained. "He was HYDRA. I was meeting with his boss, when they discovered he had lost some important project. The building it was in was blown up by enemy agents, the man barely got out alive. Not sure why enemy actions were deemed his fault, but that didn't seem to matter. The man I was there to meet said he wanted to see how I earned my level nine clearance. I could have brushed it off, but it would have been suspicious, and he would still have killed him if I didn't."

She was clearly upset by what she was saying. Everything from her body-language to her tone of voice showed she hadn't wanted to do it, but she also hadn't wanted to blow her cover. Bucky carefully wrapped an arm around her and held her close. He wasn't going to lie and say he understood. He'd never been in that kind of morally gray situation before, it had always been very clear who the bad guy was to him, including the fact that he - the Winter Soldier - had been the bad guy once HYDRA had gotten their claws into him. But he still cared for Gina, and wanted her to know he was there for her.

"I've only killed in cold blood once before... of my own volition," she admitted. He noticed the clarification of 'in cold blood', and wasn't really surprised by it. She had talked about being in battle before, and one rarely survives that sort of experience without blood on their hands. There was a clear distinction, in his mind, between killing in the heat of battle, where it was either kill or be killed... or executing someone who couldn't fight back. He knew what that difference felt like; the former could be justified, the latter would forever eat away at his conscience. "It didn't feel wrong, like this, though. The last person I chose to murder was a monster."

"And HYDRA aren't?" he asked sceptically. In a way, this conflict with HYDRA was still a war, just of a much subtler kind.

"I was keeping HYDRA impersonal." She frowned slightly. "It's not... it wasn't wrong, he was loyal to them, he was going to die anyway. Either at his boss's hands, or once we finished the list. It just felt so... senseless."

"You still haven't told anyone what you plan to do once that list is complete," Bucky pointed out.

"Because I'm sure one of you would try to stop me." Well, if she was planning to just kill all the loyal HYDRA agents, then yes, Steve would absolutely try to stop her; while Bucky might consider this simply another level of the war against HYDRA, Steve would see it as cold-blooded murder. He seriously doubted Clint or Natasha would care overmuch about the morality of it. Banner, Thor, and Stark, he didn't really know well enough to be sure how they would react.

But Bucky had no desire to stop her. He wanted HYDRA gone.

He didn't exactly like the fact that they were basically plotting to kill hundreds of people... but they were all people who had eagerly signed up to an evil organisation that sought to oppress the entire world. Gina was being very careful to vet every one of them before adding them to the list - if any of them could be turned against HYDRA, they would be.

There was only so much guilt one could reasonably feel about that, and his own sense of guilt was still far too busy trying to get over the Winter Soldier to care about those who had forced that upon him. "And it's easier if it's at a distance?" he surmised. "Whatever you're going to do, it won't be your own hands doing it."

"Exactly." she agreed.

But now he was thinking about the Winter Soldier, and he felt the need to ask, "How many people did you kill, when you were being controlled?" She had hinted several times, over the past few months, that she had been used in a  _ very _ similar way to him, so it wasn't an unreasonable question. Besides, she could just refuse to answer if she wanted to.

She frowned at the question, "Personally?" He nodded. "I'm not sure. Perhaps a few dozen? I wasn't paying all that much attention to whether I killed or merely wounded those who stood in my way, at the time. I'm only really certain of one."

There was something in the way she said that, which felt off to Bucky. Not only was between one and 'a few dozen' a pretty big margin for error, but she sounded like she was partially in denial about it. Like she just did not want to take full, direct responsibility for those she had killed. And in Bucky's opinion, if she really had been controlled like him, she  _ wasn't _ fully responsible, whether or not she fudged the numbers a bit for her conscience's sake.

"You make it sound like there's an indirect number..." Everyone on the Winter Soldier's kill count had been very direct. He could remember all their faces. Even if they were collateral damage, it had been part of his programming to ID all his victims. HYDRA liked detailed reports, and they very much disliked unknown variables. He had learned  _ that _ the hard way.

"One hundred and fifty-four." She didn't even hesitate. She must have memorised it, at some point.

The strange thing was, the number sounded familiar, he just couldn't place where he'd heard it before. And the way she looked at him now seemed like she knew what he was thinking, as well.

"You know, you have all the information you need to figure it out," she said suddenly.

"Figure what out?"

"My real name."

"I thought you were a spy, so your real name was lost to the ages," he laughed nervously. "What makes you think I could figure it out?"

She shrugged, in a way that clearly showed reluctance to elaborate, fidgeting with the silver bracelet he had given her, as an excuse to avoid meeting his eyes. She likely believed that all the clues were there if he knew where to look. This confused him, because he had no point of reference to who she could possibly be. He had been on ice for almost seventy years, and she had been using her current identity since before he returned.

Since she'd started working with the Avengers, right after the Battle of New York... which, he now remembered, had seventy-four civilian casualties, and eighty SHIELD casualties.

Oh.

Hell no.

He looked her over carefully. Vivid green eyes, almost unnaturally so. Black hair and almost ice-pale skin. She liked the cold, and her alias meant snow queen. He had read up on the old Norse mythology, after seeing Thor's strange behaviour towards her... which instantly became completely understandable if she was...

"You're not- you can't be... Loki?"

"The one and only," she said, in a tone somewhere between bitter and relieved that he finally knew the truth.

Bucky was completely stunned at the revelation. Loki was an incredibly powerful and dangerous individual, whether you were getting your information from SHIELD or from the old myths. And she had been  _ dating _ him. Not just flirting - she hadn't tried to use him, as far as he could tell - she had actually courted him.

"So that whole thing with invading New York?" he asked her dubiously.

"I wasn't exactly myself," she answered with a frown. He had guessed, but he had also needed to hear it.

He nodded slowly. That made sense. He had put the pieces together because it was the only explanation, given the evidence. Her behaviour since they had met was anything but the way Loki had acted in that battle. That Loki had been vicious, spiteful, consumed by obsessive bloodlust - something that Bucky realised in a moment of shining clarity, her stories of her brother, of  _ Thor _ , had always at least implicitly criticised him for, but far exaggerated. The Loki he knew… she was an entirely different matter.

And that was another important question. "Is this an illusion, or are you a shapeshifter like the legends say?" he asked cautiously.

"Shapeshifter," she answered, smirking faintly as she added, "I can be  _ anything _ I want." He kind of wanted to ask for a demonstration, but wasn't sure either if that was at all a good idea or how to word the question.

"Why did you want me to know who you are?" he asked, instead. Many people lie about themselves when trying to pick someone up, whether it was for a night or for longer. Bucky had never felt the need to - he was handsome enough to get by on looks alone, and charming enough not to need to - but he'd known a lot of people who did, from fellow soldiers who exaggerated their rank or exploits, to women who would claim to be virgins, or single, when it turned out they weren't.

Sure, the fact his girlfriend was  _ Loki _ was a few orders of magnitude greater than any of those things, but it still surprised him that she chose to be honest. She was a 'god' of lies. Secrets were kind of supposed to be her thing. She had even said as much, when discussing the HYDRA plot with Steve!

"I have a lot of good reasons - and more bad ones - for deceiving people," she said bluntly, "but I didn't want to do that to you."

"Why not?"

"Because I actually like you," she answered, seemingly honestly. "When my idiot brother said he was in love with a human, I thought he'd lost his mind... but I'm beginning to see that your species isn't nearly as boring as I'd thought."

Well that was  _ probably _ a compliment. It was difficult to tell. But she had been kind to him every time they had spoken, since he had been freed from HYDRA. She even helped to nurse him back to health, and not once did she look like she regretted or resented that.

"And the old legends?" Bucky asked warily.

"Those stories were composed by humans who paid too much attention to a rather eccentric Seer, and then embellished the Seer's words with their own interpretations as well," Loki explained. "I wasn't even born when they were first recorded, though a few of them did turn out to be accurate. Even on Asgard, it's generally assumed that the Ragnarok story is a real prophecy, though the details are debatable to say the least."

"They say you had children?" he asked. That fact alone wouldn't have put him off... but what the legends had to say about said children were more than a little disturbing.

"Definitely not true," Loki said, more than a little defensive. "I'm a shapeshifter, and an intelligent one at that. I can choose my form down to the least detail, I have never wanted the burden of offspring - not to mention the cruel suspicions that would have followed such children, given the Ragnarok myths - so I always choose to be barren. The closest to truth that those particular stories ever got was probably Svadilfari."

Bucky blinked, shocked. "The horse?"

Loki rolled her eyes, sneering with disgust. "It was  _ entirely _ Thor's fault. Nevermind the fact that Slepnir existed  _ long _ before I was born, so I choose to believe whoever wrote down the Seer's mad ramblings simply threw that in because it amused them... Svadilfari was  _ also a shapeshifter _ . Thor tried to set us up on a blind date, and insisted on telling him that I was 'into that sort of thing'. Rumours ranged from what was written in your mythology, to the suggestion that I murdered him and scattered the parts across the Nine Realms. I didn't do anything to him, but he was never seen in Asgard again. I like to assume he's out there somewhere, plotting revenge on Thor for the humiliation."

"This is making me wonder why you didn't go evil sooner," Bucky muttered under his breath. If someone had messed with him like that, he'd have been mad as hell.

"'Go evil'?" Loki asked, apparently amused at his turn of phrase.

"Thor told me about what you did when you found out you were Jotun," Bucky explained. "I'm beginning to wonder if he was being entirely honest." It was possible that Thor's intent behind telling that tale had been to scare Bucky off when he eventually learned Loki's identity.

But the way she looked at him now was perfectly direct, as she answered. "I tried to ensure Thor was permanently exiled from Asgard, and murdered my true father to try to impress my adopted one, in the hopes of taking Thor's place as his favoured son. I didn't really want the throne, just Odin's affection. But then when all of that failed, I lost my temper - and briefly my mind - and I tried to destroy Jotunheim. In my maddened state, I saw it as the cause of all my problems, and I just wanted to make it go away."

"Okay," Bucky said, a bit uneasy at the bluntness of that. "So he didn't exaggerate."

It was also an admission of exactly who the other person she had willingly murdered was. Her own father, at least by blood. Combined with her earlier claim he was a monster, and the attempt to destroy her own homeworld... well, Loki clearly had issues. He got the feeling, from this conversation and Thor's stories, that she saw  _ herself _ as a monster, too... but then, he felt the same way about his own time with HYDRA.

"After that... Thor probably told you I fell?"

"Yes." He couldn't help but remember his own fall... from that train... into HYDRA's clutches.

"And that's why I felt a connection to you," she added, and he wasn't entirely sure if she was just following the same obvious line of thought as him, or actually reading his mind. He also wasn't sure it really mattered which. "That was when they found me - the ones who controlled me. I've never felt truly powerless like that before, and I hated it. You went through much the same."

He imagined her experience as similar in far too many ways. The only notable - and perhaps important, in other people's opinions - difference was the order in which it happened. Bucky had been turned into something terrible after his fall, Loki went mad before it. Both of them seemed to be at least somewhat better now, though, and that was what really mattered in Bucky's opinion. She sounded regretful, talking about it now. He understood that, even if he could also easily see why others wouldn't.

Bucky nodded slowly. "You saved me."

"I didn't have to," she pointed out. "You would have broken free yourself, eventually. It would have taken longer, and hurt a lot more, but you didn't need me to free you."

"That makes it mean more," he said. "You saved me years of pain."

He leaned closer, intending to kiss her. "You're sure you want this?" she asked him. "You just made several valid points about why you really shouldn't..."

He smiled and said, "I could do worse," before finally kissing her.

\---

When Bucky woke the next morning, he was immediately aware of how wrong it was that he was alone in the bed. The things he had done with Loki last night were not the sort of things that even the haze of sleep could make him forget. There weren't words for how amazing she had been.

She had also shown evidence of actual magic, proving the whole being-Loki thing was in fact true. The possibility that she had just been telling a tall tale hadn't really been on his mind by that point (and he wasn't entirely sure he'd have minded if she had been lying; he'd never been especially picky about the moral fortitude of his lovers, he wouldn't have agreed to sleep with  _ the God of Lies _ if he had), but actual proof was still nice.

And magic, as it turned out, was both fun and practical.

He immediately threw some clothes on, and made his way into the living space of his suite, where he found Loki waiting for him.

Except, Loki didn't look like the woman he had been with last night; this was Loki as he had appeared during the Battle of New York. He was dressed differently - ordinary (for the twenty-first century) clothes, rather than the strange outfit he had been wearing in those videos. It was still a bit unsettling, though.

Bucky glanced at the door, and saw that it was locked. This was either good (nobody would recognise Loki), or bad (Loki was finally revealing the evil scheme and could be planning to kill him).

And Loki was clearly watching him, waiting for him to speak.

Based on what he knew of Loki - both from dating her, and from the stories Thor had told of him - Bucky was fairly sure Loki had a  _ lot _ of issues. At the very least, he'd grown up believing his own species were monsters, and found out only a year or so ago that he was one of them. The way she had almost tried to talk Bucky out of sleeping with her last night told him she  _ expected _ rejection, perhaps even insult or ridicule. After the care she had shown him last night, noticing and avoiding the issues he still had with being restrained on his back, Bucky sure as hell wasn't about to say anything hostile to him now.

"So what now?" Bucky asked, careful to keep the gentleness from last night in his voice.

Loki shrugged, affecting an air of indifference. Bucky honestly couldn't tell if it was real or not. "That is up to you. Either way, I'm stuck with this mission on Earth for the next few years, so the odds are that you'll see me every week whether you still want to or not."

Bucky frowned, "I don't understand."

He didn't understand why Loki now appeared as a man for this conversation. He didn't know what Loki really wanted from him - they had been dating for several months, and then last night she had suddenly revealed her true identity and then... well it had been a hell of a night, and he had absolutely no complaints about  _ that _ . But was Loki trying to imply that was all it had been? He'd heard Asgardians lived for thousands of years, maybe a few months was their equivalent of a one-night-stand.

He wouldn't complain if that was the case, it had been an awesome one night... but he still hoped he was guessing wildly wrong here. "Why wouldn't I want to keep seeing you?"

"I've been led to believe most humans are... picky, about their lovers," Loki said, his voice seeming to show a combination of amusement, disdain and uncertainty. The last of those echoed the earlier signs of a deep-seated fear of rejection.

"Picky?" Bucky asked sceptically.

"I think you'd call it 'having a type'." As they had spoken, Loki had crossed the room, so that now he was standing right in front of Bucky. They were almost equal in height, now - Loki was very slightly taller - as a woman, she had been a good few inches shorter than Bucky.

"Well I'm pretty sure I'm straight, if that's what you mean." He wasn't afraid... well, no, he knew Loki was dangerous, but he was no  _ more _ afraid of him as a man than as a woman.

He had never known anyone who had admitted to being anything other than straight before, but he also had access to the Internet in the modern age, and he'd learned a fair amount about the changing standards of society. He'd known a few, in the past, though it had never been spelled out. He had never held it against them - whether it was living from day to day or on the frontline, there always seemed to be far more important things to worry about - and understood that he had probably known several more, he just hadn't known  _ about _ it at the time. The idea of it didn't bother him in the slightest, it just didn't interest him either.

Besides, as an alien shapeshifter, it probably seemed strange to Loki that anyone would want to limit themselves like that when they could - as she had said last night - be  _ anything _ .

"Only 'pretty sure'?" Loki asked, and Bucky could tell by the way he smirked at those exact words, just what he was about to do before it happened.

He didn't resist when Loki kissed him, and when he closed his eyes he could almost picture her as she had been last night. But that only lasted a moment, before he felt Loki's hands on his hips, and he knew this wasn't right.

He pushed Loki away gently, and met his eyes - those vivid green eyes hadn't changed.

Loki didn't look upset at all, he just shrugged and then in the blink of an eye was female again. "Like I said: picky." She sounded amused as she said that. "I don't mind. I just wanted to see where the line was."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, what's your type? Does it have to be human?" she asked, faintly amused.

Bucky stared at her for that. "I don't even know what most aliens look like!" he said, shocked. The only aliens he had ever seen were basically Thor and Loki (both looked human enough), and the Chitauri, from those videos of the battle (definite no).

She didn't seem even slightly concerned by his confusion, just shrugged. "I can be whatever you want me to be," she explained, and from the way Loki had kissed him a minute ago, from the way she spoke now, it was pretty damned clear she was still interested, in spite of the fact Bucky had rejected that kiss when Loki was a man. "This is my preferred female form, but if you have any suggestions..."

It was a bit strange, the idea of being with a shapeshifter like this. She had demonstrated a few minor such abilities last night, as well; altering her breast size and hair colour, as part of the foreplay. He was pretty sure he'd made his opinion of blonde hair not suiting her quite clear, and she had actually laughed and agreed.

But this conversation wasn't born from a desire to push him away at all... she had likely thought of it last night, but waited until now to deliberately go looking for the lines he didn't want to cross, and now she had that information he trusted her not to misuse it. He fully expected her to tap-dance on the line, but not cross it.

Bucky shook his head, smiling and pulling her closer to him. "You're fine just the way you are," he said, before kissing her again.

\---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, Part 1 is now complete... the next update you'll see for this series will be a single-chapter interlude; mostly Bucky/Loki fluff, really. A bunch of in-jokes and pop-culture references. Just generally my idea of fun.
> 
> After that, Part 2: Reality.


End file.
